How Many Rocks Can My Pockets Hold?~

Written on December 7^th, 2009~

 Earlier this morning when I took my dog out for a walk, the air was a mist of grey fog. The sun was a haze in the early morning sky. When I first glanced up, I thought the Sun was the Moon, defused in the grey mist and entangle in the dense cloud cover. My breath and the fog were inseparable.  

It had snowed during the night. Everything was covered in white. Each branch was coated, in a perfect holiday photo shoot. The ground was frozen so even the driveway was paved white.

I stayed near the house, and planned on walking out back later in the day.

It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon by the time I decided to take a walk. The snow was no longer coating the trees. Only lines of snow zigzagged across the lawn   

Uriah took off in the trees, angrily barking.  He reappeared in front of me, only to follow the tracks of a grey squirrel. Whose residence is in the trees at the beginning of the path.

 The air was cold yet tolerable. I had forgotten my gloves back by the house and my fingers weren’t freezing, so I was happy. I started walking to the right, where the ground moves upward on a slight incline. Directly in the center of the path a small, three inch evergreen had taken root. I never saw it before.  I made a mental note to remember and check on it in spring.  If it really was growing on the path I’ll need to transplant it.

 I continued on my way. When I reached the far back and started to circle home, I stopped to admire the old farm house and its red barn, equally sized white Silos and smaller buildings all built up together like a castle, the surrounding grass and turned over fields, patterned shades of brown, yellow, green, and beige.  The sections were the last rain fell washed the dirt to a dark black.  White snow striped the empty corn fields.

I could see for miles…  

Faded green grass still stood out in the farmer’s air field. Along the air field, past forty acres of plowed fields, I watched Black Angus cows. They moved slowly into a fenced in field. 

Off to the northeast, I could see helicopter hovering in the direction of the express way.

Uriah started to bark, as  I walked  back, I kept calling  his name, and he kept answering by barking- not by appearing.

I reached the part of the path, that was directly across from where I saw the little evergreen, at the beginning of my walk.  I stopped and poked the dirt with my ski pole, it gave way. I called to Uriah each call I stabbed the pole at the dirt, I hit a rock!

Curiosity got the better of me.  I stood there digging out this little rock, which lay just under the dirt and field grass. It was a slight tipsy square flat rock, to my eye it was nearly perfect. With the thought of crafting something, maybe checkers.  I slipped it into my pocket as Uriah barked again.

At that point I looked down, and found another little evergreen growing on the path.

The grass all around me had given up trying to reach for the sky and laid level with the ground, sleeping until spring.   I walked back a few feet searching for more of the little saplings. I found six more going in the center of the path.

Uriah’s barking became more agitated; I started walking back towards home. Every few feet I called him and he answered back, I felt like I was playing ‘Marco Polo’ with him.