It’s a Wednesday morning after a heavy rain. A large tree, about 30 feet tall uprooted and fell in the night. Before it toppled, it stood about 20′ from my tiny house. I don’t remember hearing it, though it must’ve made a big crash. Fortunately it fell downhill towards the creek. The impact shattered the 18″ diameter trunk into multiple pieces. It had been dead and standing, rotting from the inside for awhile.
Just after dawn Daisy and I walked the big meadow at the nature preserve that’s 3 miles from my house. On the path to the meadow the orange clay mud felt good on the bottoms of my bare feet and oozing between my toes. Cool, silky, soothing.
The meadow, as big as 3 football fields and surrounded by woods, had a white mist hovering over it on the far end in the distance as I entered from the wooded path. The sight of it inspired me to breathe it in deeply. Beautiful and bit surreal, like a scene from a movie where horses or wolves emerge from the mist, running in slow motion.
On the path and along the edges, where the meadow plants have started to grow up, are tiny bright red berries. Like strawberries but littler. I’ve just read the chapter in Braiding Sweetgrass about wild strawberries so I’m feeling bold and I pick some and try them- are they edible? Cool in my mouth, still sheathed in rainwater and dew, mildly tasting of a cucumber and guava. I looked them up later. They’re false strawberries AKA Indian Strawberries. I ate half a dozen or so randomly as we looped the meadow.
Daisy came upon a painted turtle at the edge of the path. She cautiously sniffed it and quickly pulled back as the turtle poked it’s head out and retracted it. A little game the two of them played. Nice to see the turtle and to know that it wasn’t really scared of us. It never retreated fully into it’s shell, just kept an eye on us.
Mostly I walked as Daisy trotted from scent to scent, happily exploring. I did a couple of rounds of bear crawls- hands and feet crawling- for 50 yards or so, and my normal shoulder and eye exercises. Blissful, peaceful, beautiful, a light scent of honeysuckle wafting from the forest edge. Perfect Spring morning in the Piedmont of NC.
Back home at the tiny house after swinging some kettlebells and doing some pull ups I have a treat for breakfast- my daughter’s eggs from Colorado! She carried them on the plane when visiting us recently. I get to eat green, blue, and brown eggs from hens raised free range in the countryside outside of Boulder. I make my pot of tea and boil magical CO eggs as I prepare to sit down and write this little vignette.