Saturday, November 17, 2007

Winter walk


It was fairly cold today, but sunny and not windy. We walked to the dam first, to throw some rocks. They were a blur of motion finding and throwing rocks. Scout’s bowels, stimulated as they always are by being somewhere strange, kicked into overdrive and she marked the area several times. Then back to the car for a snack of beef jerky and dehydrated apples and off on a long walk.


We were just headed up the trail when we saw a big group of geese way up in the air, headed right for us. They dropped and dropped, rocking back and forth, making a lot of wing noise. They started swinging upriver, then swung a hard left hand loop and hit the water right in front of us. The half-white goose we watched all summer was in with the group. I fumbled for the camera, but it happened so fast. We saw lots of mushrooms, ducks and geese, and smelled that fall leaf-smell, and heard the dry leaves hissing over our heads the whole way.


Nick walked as far as he ever has, far enough to need me to carry him most of the way back to the truck.