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Writers Group - October 2023

Fall Colors, Walk, Visit to an apple orchard

My new dog and I took a walk the other day. It was a sunny, pleasant fall day and we had the road to ourselves. We turned left at the driveway and went up the steep little hill in front of our house and then on toward the big hill. There are trees on either side of the road and they are changing color. There is a little creek on one side that is relishing the recent rains. The sky was blue and all was beautiful.

Lib is not the best dog for walking. She is not on a leash of course and she doesn’t stay with me very well. She was way ahead of me when I saw her rollling ecstatically on something on the edge of the road. I assumed it was something dead, and of course it was. An entire leg from hoof to hip of a deer. I assume (again) that it was left from someone’s legally hunted deer.

I told LIb she could bring the deer leg home with her if she wanted. I was reminded not long ago of a photo of my old dog I posted years ago of her proudly returning home with a deer leg in her jaws. But LIb didn’t think that was a good idea. So.... I had to do it for her. I semi-delicately grabbed the deer’s delicate little hoof and pulled it the half mile home.

At first Lib hid the deer leg, buried it I assume, but recently it reappeared in the lawn beside the deck.

Today LIb and I took another short walk. This time we turned right at the driveway. Just by the mailbox, there was a commotion in the deep ditch leading to the neighbor’s bean field, and suddenly in a flurry of wingbeats and bird calls, two pheasants took off. They flew like WWII airplanes, straight and fast and disappeared before I could tell their missions. Lib and I did not have a souvenir to bring home.

Their war plane-like takeoffs, sudden with straight out-stretched wings and fast vectored flights made me grateful that they were only game birds and not war planes. I wonder sometimes how lucky we are to have lived our lives in a land that does not have wars. I can’t believe we are lucky for a reason. I can only believe it’s random fate.

We live in a beautiful place. Perhaps more importantly, we live in a safe place. The trees turn their colors and shed their leaves. The grasses and weeds dry and shed their seeds. The farm crops mature and are harvested. The apple trees share their bounty. The neighbor women made apple pies and I bought one to store in the freeezer for the next time we have a family dinner.

We know when we hear gunshots it’s only the Amish neighbors harvesting a deer or our other neighbor the gun enthusiast testing out his latest black powder rifle. I’m sorry the rest of the world is not as lucky as we are. I’m sorry for the wars and the hunger and illnesses and the poverty. I wish I had answers. I don’t believe there are any answers. I’m sorry for that too.

Reading this a day later, I wonder if I have somehow stumbled into a Second Amendment argument. Some might say my dog and I are safe to walk the gravel road and share the land with nature because of all those guns in private hands. I disagree, but who really knows for sure?

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Another fifty words - another one hundred fifty - to fill the quota. It’s Monday morning, Jim is doing his taxes. I know I was surprised too. Felt a bit like time travel until he reminded me that he hadn’t filed this spring but had gotten an extension. He feels like he has all in hand. He will file on line. I wonder if I could get him to go to the library with me and print them off. That would add to his life literacy. He brought me down the letter he’d found on his upstairs desk from S when S had quit the Planning and Zoning Committee. It was a lovely letter. It acknowledged Jim’s capability and thanked him. It was beautifully written. They
were special people. Both are dead now. The letter was written in 2002. Jim had been planning and zoning for a long time now.

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Lawn mowing at Westminster Abbey.

Last updated October 17, 2023