Morning Walks
shore
carey
jam
I have enjoyed a couple of morning hikes with Carey lately, always a nice way to start the day. While I was walking up the canyon to meet her last week, a red pick-up truck came bumping along, driven by a guy in a plaid flannel shirt who stopped to say hello. Turns out he's our neighbor Andy's son, and he's staying here for a little while, and he'd love to chat some more but he's on his way to the dentist because he was eating roasted duck last night and broke his molar when he bit straight into some buck shot.
"You shot your own duck for dinner?" I asked.
"Goodness no," he said. "My grandma gave it to me."
Honestly, I couldn't make this stuff up.
In the course of our wanderings that day, Carey and I encountered a series of prehistoric-looking red salamanders sitting in the middle of the road. Carey kept stopping, very gently picking up each one and moving it to safety. She has a kind heart and she's not squeamish, that girl.
She is a fledgling birdwatcher too, and when we got to the beach, she excitedly pointed out some "long-billed dowagers" strutting along on the sand. I was quite charmed by the name and told a few people about it, but later she sent me an email telling me that the bird was a curlew, not a dowitcher, and when it comes to bird information, I must never believe her, because she is usually wrong. I admire her enthusiasm anyway. She notices things.
And apparently there are no birds called dowagers, which is a pity.
Speaking of noticing, we stopped to stare at a mysterious wooden staircase someone had built into a hillside, straight up, maybe a thousand little steps, and we couldn't understand why. Just another strange change to the landscape, I guess...a little less conventional than a fence or a wall, but still a sort of signature and claim. I told Jeanne about it afterwards as though it were big news and she said it had been there for years. Funny how you don't see something and suddenly you do, and once you do you never don't again.
On another morning, we went to a certain cave not far from here because it seemed the right place to welcome the start of the Chinese New Year and offer up our hopes for better days. We stood and looked out beyond the rocks and hills to the sea shining in the distance, and I silently said a wishful sort of prayer. There really have been some hard times lately...it was good to face forward and imagine better outcomes.
Then Carey gave me a present: a jar of pear-vanilla jam that she'd made. And okay, it was actually more syrup than jam, but it's perfect for spooning over ice cream or toast, and it gave the day more sweetness.Afterwards I hurried home to wash the poison oak oils from my arms. I seem to have emerge unscathed.