Daydreams of the Soul

Busy day today with not much time for writing.  You see, like a lot of writers, I also have another job.  My bills get paid now because I also sell insurance.  It’s funny, because I don’t really like to sell but I will modestly admit that I’m pretty good at it.  I care about the people I sell policies to, it makes me feel good to know that if they get hurt, or sick, they have a financial backup because of the company I work for.  But as I talked to each new employee I kept looking at my watch.  I couldn’t wait until the day was done, and I could get back to my computer.  Words burned through my brain, just itching to get put down on paper.  And of course, when I did get home, and opened the draft of my novel to write what I thought of all day, nothing came.  I couldn’t get what was in my brain to come out in the words I wanted.

Instead, my thoughts wandered to a day a couple of weeks ago when my husband and I were at the lake.  It was the beginning of May, but it felt like June.  Even though it was only 9 in the morning and felt very pleasant, you could tell that it was going to reach into the 80’s.  We decided that we were going to walk to the back lake, which if you take the road back is about a mile and a half hike. Sometimes we will take the “buggy” which is what Dad calls the 6 person vehicle known as a Gator.  But when you do that, you miss too much.  Animals get scared off by the sound, you move too fast to really see the small details of the forest.  Besides, we really needed the exercise.  Now, a simple hike shouldn’t take too much preparation, but in this case, we knew we should have a few things with us.  Water, a blanket to sit on, my old 35mm Canon camera, ammunition for the guns we carried.  Yes, we carried guns.  There are several bears on the property, and rumors of a wolf.  It being spring, there could be bear cubs, which means protective mama bears.  We forgot one import thing, but I’ll get to that later.

We left the dogs in the cabin.  Lucky is too old to take that long of a walk so we left Zeus to keep him company. Unlocking the lower gate, we headed up the hill through the ferns.  They were already over my knees, tall for this time of year.  Green and lush they swished as we walked through them. The forest floor was dotted with the white of trillium.  What a treat!  Trillium only bloom for a very short period every spring and each sighting feels like a gift.  I rarely get to see them because I am almost never there in the spring.  As we got to the main trail, the trees greeted us.  “Scrreeooo.  Scrreeooo.” Branches rubbed together above our heads.  “Hello my friends”, I said looking up.  “It’s good to see you too!” (Yes, I talk to trees.  Quite often they talk back. Or at least it seems like they do!)  We had a wonderful time on our walk.  For three hours we followed almost all the logging trails, down and around, to the bay and the lake that is best for fishing crappie.  At the curve on the trail to the point, a deer stood and posed for me, soft brown ears twitching, white tail flicking.  She stood there for several minutes, long enough for me to get several shots with my trusty Canon before she bounded away across the trail.  We saw signs of many deer, and some bear.  Coming back down to the main trail from one of the side trails, there was a pile of “scat” that hadn’t been there when we went up the side trail.  Bear.  Um…maybe time to head back?  But because we were close to our goal of the back lake, we kept on going.

We reached the back lake, and right on the shore line was a bear print in the mud.  It was almost as big as MY foot!  No cub this, it was surely Grandfather bear.  The only man-made thing on the back lake is the dock, and we sat down to rest for a minute.  And discovered the one important thing we had forgotten in our preparations –  bug spray.  Not just bug spray, but tick spray.  My husband picked one off his pants leg and then another and another.  I jumped up off the dock and lifted up my shirt.  Crap, there were five of those nasty little creatures on my stomach!  Now, I hate ticks.  They give me the creeps.  I picked them off, and did a quick check of my arms, pulled up my pants legs to check my legs.  I pulled off several more.  That was it, time to head back.

We stayed on the main trail this time, and made it to the cabin in record time.  We stood outside the cabin door on the deck, and stripped.   Good thing we were up there by ourselves.  By the time we finished pulling off ticks, we had counted at least 30 of the things.  We looked like monkeys grooming each other, picking bugs off each other’s backs and out of our hair.  Into the showers we went, with one last tick check afterwards and we were ready for another adventure.  This one we took by car!