A Walk to Familiar Territory

Mark and I have been switching off walking Mellon in the mornings, ala Dog Whisperer advice, but this morning Mark had to go to a meeting and so the dog walking got put off so that we could have some morning together and after he left John and I took her. Before leaving I was looking at google maps texting directions to Mark so that he could get where he was going and John was really interested in the map, so I printed off a map from our house to the church and we set off on our walk.

When I was a little girl my mom would take us on walks around out long long block in Louisiana, we would take buckets and gather berries for jelly, or pinecones, or flowers or whatever. She taught us the names of the different plants, we talked about which ones were good and which ones were poisonous, she taught us about all the bugs and stuff that we saw and how to run and scream from a snake, and told us stories about all kinds of silly stuff. These were great times with my mom, days that I miss. Later when Tina, my sister, was pregnant with her first baby, she, Mom and I would walk for an hour or so each night around the little town that we lived in. Those nights in Iowa were the best ones there, oh we still talked about the different flowers and such, but we had a lot of good laughs together too and got to be friends.

The walk today with John was not only to the familiar places that he and I have walked over and over again since we've been here but for me it was a memory of fun days when I was a little girl and walked with my mom. We watched the map and named the streets and looked for the turns. The wind is blowing like crazy today so we got to pick up a Robin's egg that was knocked intact from it's nest, count leaves on branches that blew out of the tree, look at different kinds of seeds that are blowing around and smelled one that really stinks, followed a contrail to see the plane, listened to the train blow it's whistle, discuss why church was closed and he couldn't get a drink there, watch John back up all the curbs that he could never get up forwards (he figured this out on his own, I guess from watching us back his chair up into the truck), he got to run his tires in the water in the ditch, run over sticks and bumps in the pavement and even say hi to the mailman.

All in all it probably wasn't an effective walk for the dog other than she learned to not walk in front of me and got to sit and wait a bunch, but for me and John it was lots of fun and a memory that I will treasure right next to those ones of walks with my mom.