Memories of Gordy

Tonight I went for my first walk since I got home. I have always loved to go for walks, which is one of the reasons that Vegas was hard for me to be in: it is not walker-friendly. By walk, I don't mean my shoes slapping down some pavement sidewalk in the middle of urbania (although if this is all that is available to you then rock on fellow walker). I mean meandering down some back pathway through a park or some woods or in my case through some overgrown creekbanks. The decision to walk came suddenly, but the urge had been present since I got home and it felt really good to spoil this particular urge. I set off with just my walkman and door key and decided that the less I saw of town the better, so instead of turning toward the main road I turned away from it and headed toward what I thought was going to be a kind of grassy back alley. Little did I know it would be a perfect quiet walking spot! The path started out easily enough, somebody had obviously been through with a mower and the brush was kept tangled at the sides of the embankment I found myself on. Down one gentle sloping edge were blackberry briars, a possible strawberry patch (couldn't really tell as there were no actual strawberries, but the vines looked similar) and beyond that were peoples' backyards. Down the other gentle sloping edge were more blackberry briars, more strawberry vines some shrubby trees of yet to be identified species and a very still creek. Continuing on, I found the strawberry vines criscrossing my pathway and weeds upon ant holes upon packed grass all buried within tall cat tails and overgrown wheaty grass (the kind your mind tells you isn't wheat but looks like the pictures of wheat from books). The cattails came up to my elbows, as did the wheaty grass and every once in a while I would have to push it aside just to make sure that I wasn't going to step on some small critter. I saw birds that looked a bit like pheasants from far away and a hawk up in the sky. After pushing my way through the "brush" (a short solid patch of wheaty grass and sticker thorns running on the ground) I came to what can best be described as a bankful of daisies. All along the creek bank, just on my side of the trees ran bushes and bushes of tall daisies, catching the setting sunlight enough to reflect it a bit, causing the flowers to glow. It looked like something out of a picture book. I followed along sort of brushing my fingers through the daisies (careful to watch for bees) and was picking my way over a rather large crabgrassy weed looking thing when I looked up and saw a deer. That's right a deer. It was looking straight at me, not quite sure what to make of me as I was obviously a human and therefore Not A Friend, but I wasn't trying to get to it or touch it or lure it to me so I was also obviously Not a Threat. I stopped walking and just stood there, looking at the doe, who was looking back at me and sort of scratching it's right hoof against it's left leg in a sort of sidetracked "must scratch this itch" kind of way. I didn't hold my breath like some would, and I didn't try to slowly creep toward it as a tourist would either. Instead I just stood there and watched it watching me. I tried to telepath that I was friendly and meant no harm and would just stay put while she decided what to do. It must have worked because after a minute of sizing me up, she took a few trotting steps toward me, stopped and watched me watching her some more and then just turned and ambled away. It was very cool. It brought a whole new meaning to the scene with Gordie and the Doe in Stand By Me. After that I meandered on at a much slower pace. I admit, I was hoping the doe would come back out of the brambles and look at me some more, but she never did. That was hardly the end to my discoveries, though. At the end of my embanky path, there was a large pasture and a small enclosure housing two horses. The enclosure was far away and I would have had to leap over a small offshoot of the creek I had been walking along, so I stayed where I was, and just watched the horses turning around in their stalls and then when I'd had my fill I turned around and headed home. On the way back I found what I think is an apple tree, but could possibly be a plum tree. It's hard to tell as the fruit is still round and green. The fruit looks more like apples, although I won't find out until later on this summer. I also found a cherry tree absolutely dripping with cherries. I was tempted to pick a few to eat on the way home, but I decided against it because a) knowing my luck the berries wouldn't be cherries they would be some weird poisonous berry that disguises itself as a cherry and b) I would rather leave the yummy berries there for the deer and other critters to eat. After all, they don't wander into the grocery stores and just nip off with bags of the chips I like to eat (at least not yet this year)! I also managed to find myself in the middle of a dragonfly nest that I had missed on my way out. Dragonflies normally creep me out to no end, but these were just little dragonflies. I think they were only teenagers because they kept well enough away from me, there were just a zillion of them all flying around me in a sort of dragonfly cloud. After a minute they dispersed and I was allowed to continue on my way home, back past the daisy walls and over the mowed grass and on to the house. It was a good walk. I can't wait to go again.