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A walk in the woods

The dreariness of the day limits the amount of hikers

The quiet of the forest

Streams formed by the rain of yesterday

Some trickling down the path we walk on

Others in torrents, slowly eroding the sands beneath our feet

Boulders covered with moss and lichen

Slimy to the touch, slippery to traverse

Do we take the longer hike around the ridge to the top

Or the shorter, straight up on the wet boulders

The longer has the view, the shorter has the adventure

All roads lead to Rome, so we take the long way up, the short way down.

Fog descends from above to cover the vista view

It plays peek-a-boo with us, teasing us with glimpses of the lake

Our choice was good, we get to see sites that the other hikers miss in the fog

The way back is steep

Jackets get tied around our waists

Sweat drenches our shirts as we complete our journey

A passerby takes a picture of the three of us.

It is the only one of us three together on our week-long trip.

Back to the solitude of our cottage

Lunch, a rest and then back on the road again.

 

As my summer vacation progresses I continue to observe tourists that we run into on our travels. Of course I’m not denying the fact that we are tourists also. I am sure we are being watched by others. I certainly am being observed and commented upon by my son. He says he can spot a tourist at any distance. That’s not hard to believe, since basically most of the people that we are seeing here on Desert Island in Maine are tourists. I may not remember a particular place we went to, but the people we saw will generally stick in my mind.

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What would a family trip be, without the option to look in on ourselves and other people traveling and gaining a better insight into the human condition? We start at the home front and look in at my own family as they prepare to depart. The closer we get to departure time, the more tense the situation is.  Are all the bags packed? Did you forget to set the air conditioners? What about all the plethora of medications that we always take on our trips, most of which will stay in their respective utility bags without being touched? The answer to this last question is usually yes we have packed them all, and yes we do need them all, because you never know. Then there is the packing of the car itself. What can be stored for long term retrieval and what has to have immediate access. If it is going to rain. . . maybe. . . we need to be able to get to our rainwear.
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She came to us a stray, pregnant, ready to give birth. It was 1990. We fed her outside the house for a few days before she gave birth in our backyard. Little did we know the effect this cat would have on our lives. She was a domestic shorthaired cat. She gave birth to 5 kittens, one was still born and the rest lived, but for how long would depend on our compassion and fortitude. Whether she gave birth on our basement porch or we moved the kittens there from under a bush, I don’t remember. I do remember worrying whether or not Rinny, which was the name we eventually gave her, would be willing to raise these kittens with us there. After a while we began to worry about predators since our porch was open and whether or not Rinny would abandon her kittens, so we decided to move them into our basement.

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I was never much of a reader when I was young. Though my parents encouraged me to read, I never found it interesting enough. I don’t know if school helped or not, since there were no books in my early years that I remember having read that excited me. My parents didn’t read to me and I don’t recall things that were read to me in elementary school.

Each year we had to take standardized tests to determine our reading and math skills. I always scored well on those tests. I would be a year or two above my grade level, so I did know how to read. If anything, the books chosen by some of my teachers for me to read should have discouraged me.

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Recently I ran into an author/illustrator of books, Richard Torrey. I’ve been acquainted with him for years, ever since I had his daughter in my class. We got to talking about storytelling and writing. He was in the process of sending his second proof of a book he was working on to his publisher. I mentioned that I am still interested in becoming a published author some day, but haven’t worked much on any new stories (fiction wise) since my Dora and the Jade of Knowledge story. His comment to me was to just keep on writing.  He mentioned that he had been at a writer’s conference recently where a famous author said it took almost 20 years to get published, so I shouldn’t get discouraged. He also mentioned another famous quote, I think attributed to Thomas Edison, stating that as long as I keep writing/inventing, even if most of my work is poor, I will eventually find some gems. Something like that.
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How do you shop? For me it depends on what I’m shopping for. There are those stores that I go to that I’m determined to be in and out as quick as possible. I go in get what I’m planning on getting and leave. This usually happens when I go by myself to purchase clothing or food. Some would say that is the male hunter instinct. This can be annoying to my wife when I go shopping for something like clothes and manage to find what I’m looking for right away. She’s more of the gatherer type so can’t understand, how I do it. She will shop and shop buying much more than she needs, knowing that after a fashion show at home she will choose to keep some of the articles purchased and will return the rest. It’s my understanding that that is also a stereotypical female trait. It works for her, so I don’t complain. Actually it helped me during my recent Mother’s day shopping excursion.
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Under you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, grumpy faces don’t always mean grumpy people, but I do wonder at times if that is true. I think this is a chicken or the egg, which came first type paradox. Do people with pleasant personalities naturally have smiley faces or is it that a naturally smiley face leads one to be pleasant. Sounds like a good research project for some university.
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I’m finding it difficult to write lately. I have lots of ideas that go through my head, but when I want to write them down, I forget what it was I was thinking. Hopefully I’ll come up with a better memory aid to help me write.  My goal this week is to try and write every day. I’m presently in cleaning and organizing mode. We are having a yard sale on Saturday, which prompts me to go through a lot of old stuff.  In doing so, I came across this piece of writing that I did in the Summer of 1991. It is as if while looking for old things to sell, I found an old thing that is to be remembered.

Ah…To Be Then Again
by Harvey Heilbrun
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When I look though my photo albums of my father, he always seems to be smiling. What amazes me is that is not the image of him that I remember.
My father was always very demanding and hard to please. He always shared great visions of himself in his youth. He was a great soccer player and played for one of the German national teams, Schalke 04. He was very proud of his past. (It should be noted that I, nor anyone else in my family have been able to corroborate this fact). Having built himself up so high, it was hard for me to match his expectations, though I tried. Read the rest of this entry »