The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise. . .but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.” 

― Henry David Thoreau

At 5:00 a.m. when Charlie’s barking from across the room woke me, I was irritated. He’d seen something in the field he felt needed chasing. And as I crawled bleary eyed out of bed I realized I should be grateful and let him out to chase whatever has been eating my flowers in the meadow. We had to delay our walk. A thunder storm blew in for an hour or so and both dogs huddled shaking in our room. Once it passed, we went happily into the wet woods. Two cheerful dogs forgot all about their recent terror and trotted along in the mud. Wild blueberries are ripening. Blossoms are blown off branches. I step under a wet branch arched over the trail and wonder what kind of tree this is. Later, discover it’s an Ironwood Hop-hornbeam. So happy to now know its name. And I took the trail to where campers camp (by permission of the Trustees) on summer weekends at the edge of the Charles. Two fathers in canoes were packing gear, no kids in sight. Apparently, they had to evacuate the campers in the storms and had returned to paddle out the gear themselves. I walked down the Charles and caught a picture of them paddling by, two fathers, talking about their divorces. I am tired. But I keep going. I’m trying to imagine finishing my planting in my garden, but I’m out of energy. And then I surprise myself, and once home, finish planting and then cart rocks to edge the garden, more and more rocks, picking them from various places around the property. I do not have to water today. In the afternoon I take a nap – a huge, dopey nap that lasts for over two hours. The kind you cannot take when you have young kids. The kind that nobody wakes you from, you’re free to indulge. But I wake up and realize we’re having company and I have to shop and prepare – except, I discover Frank has gone to the store and there is little left to prep. I cross the field and stretch my legs at the river and decide to put some grass seed down in an area by one of the benches, and so I accomplish that. We have dinner outdoors on the deck, no mosquitos tonight, and it’s dry and warm and a summery heavenly evening. Tomorrow, I expect more rain to water the grass seed. I think about the fathers of the young campers, adjusting to divorce. Good fathers camping with their sons, taking care of them during the storm. They passed in their separate canoes, close enough in the quiet, gentle Charles to have a meaningful chat.