Today I had walking lessons. I am to do these in VERY SLOW MOTION and carry my cane because it helps me regain my gait. I just wish it had a silver dolphin on the top like Inspector Poirot.
Oh well. Tracy told me it is also useful for whacking miscreants.
Heel Toe. Heel Toe. Heel Toe Heel toe, Heel toe.......heel toe......
A few years ago I went up to Sheep Creek by myself to spend a day painting . It's a long dusty drive and I had to go down the Blind Grade (a winding gravel road that makes me ill with fear) to get there, but I finally pulled into the campground about an hour after I left my sister's house.
Sheep Creek's source gushes out from a draw on the side of the mountain and chases down the hill through a dense choke of spruce and Douglas pines. It then dives under the road through a Forest Service culvert and spreads out into the narrow valley below. A hundred sparkling fingers of water meander between small islands of nodding aconite and smiling daisies to finally gather in the dark shadows at the bottom of the hill.
In the middle field, on a sunny summer day, it feels like you are walking in fields of colored diamonds.
I parked myself on a sunny rock, put on my cowboy hat and shades and painted until late afternoon. Just down below me was this copse of trees where the water joined and eddied up. My dad would have brought his fly rod and cast a couple of times into that eddy and probably snagged a little native rainbow trout, too little to keep, but a brave little fighter. They are the prettiest little trout, and so quick and wary. Not at all like the hatchery fish, which are fat and somewhat stupid. They'll eat anything you put on a hook.
Anyhow, while I painted,tiny blue butterflies rose and fell among the flowers and the mud at the water's edge, and a black and white Viceroy butterfly even landed on my head. I could see his shadow as it lit on mine. It was a Bambi movie moment. I went home that day in a dazzle of light and water sounds.
Three days later a Forest service guy told me he had been in that same spot that afternoon and had been stalked by a cougar. The man found fresh pug marks in the mud and dust of the road when he came up from the creek.
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