Blazing a trail

It seems only yesterday (a child came out to wonder....) that he was a boy playing in the dirt with Big Kitty.


And the seasons go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down....
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came...

So the years spin by and now the boy is...*

A man who goes off each morning to a job, thank the Lord for small mercies, and exactly month from today he will be 32 years old.

At Christmas, one of the machines at the mill broke and they couldn't get the part--or a repairman to fix it--for several days, and so our son was off work longer than he expected and was sort of climbing the walls with boredom.

So I handed him the lopping shears and asked him to please cut a path out to the pond. And it took him hardly any time at all to blaze a trail through the forest of cedars. I asked him to take me on the path he had cut.




And a few more bare limbs need to be removed.


Back when he was a little kid and Big Kitty was still alive, on sunny winter days, we would bundle up and grab a handful of small rocks from the driveway and walk out to the pond. The cat always came with us. And we would skid the rocks across the ice and Big Kitty would chase them and bat them with her paws, and arch her back and go nuts. It was hilarious.


I never realized cats who are allowed outside went for walks with their slaves. Squeaker happened to be outside, and so came with us--of course--and is walking along the edge of the water on the left. At this time of year, the pond is a sorry site. It looks lifeless, but the view is made even more dismal by the fact that the fence builders, who made a mistake about where the fence line was, cut down the fringe of sugar maples on the south rim. I am a little angry about that, but there is not much I can do about it now.


Squeaker does not understand the chase-rocks-on-the-ice game, and besides, the ice was very thin because it has not been that cold and there were no more trees on the south side to keep it in the shade.

It warmed up to almost 70 degrees not too long after I took this picture, and I am almost sure I heard one of the little frogs that lives here peeping that night. Before too long, it will be Spring and the pond will come alive with frogs and dragonflies and...life

*Copyright © Siquomb Publishing Company