Travelling Circus
It started out as an afternoon walk. The morning rains had come and gone, the sky cleared, the day warmed up nicely, the birds sang lustily, and we were of a mind to trek along. Nine dogs in all, from the very tiny to the small, to medium-sized, larger, and largest. How the owner of seven of these dogs is able to take them along on leash is beyond me, but that's another story, to be sure. And the tiniest one can always be tucked into a jacket to keep him out of harm's way, although he, like the others, prefers to gambol about and enjoy the pleasure of a late spring day in the woods, just as the rest of us do.
Just as we were setting off through the first field to take us into the woods, a faint voice rising on the wind. A neighbour asking to accompany us. Her contribution to the herd is a miniature horse. A horse, yet so reduced in size from the normal that it stands 32" tall, not very much more than the largest of the dogs. And the dogs don't mind its presence, after initial sniffs, so off we all go.
Four adults, two children, nine dogs, one horse. It's a lovely day. We pass one reforestation project after another, mostly White and Scotch pine, before dipping down into a bit of a cully, turning left and proceeding through a more mature wood. Here and there we see bits of spring flowers; trilliums, lilies-of-the-valley, trout lilies, wild strawberries, offering up their little flashes of colour as we progress.
This geography is the edge of the Canadian Shield and there is more than enough granite sitting flat on the ground in great swaths, moss- and lichen-covered. Before we leave the trail, we come across the remains of an old log house, very small, long abandoned. All that is left of it is the root cellar dug a dozen feet down into the ground, now overgrown with young poplars and maples, but its original structure still sound, absent the house itself.
It's a walk through nature, yet a walk back into history. A lone apple tree sits nearby, its tentative blossoms already in evidence.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, May 11, 2006
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