A walk in the park

You can not believe how sweet and complex are the aromas in the forest when it rains. Stepping around puddles of water I breath deeply to capture as much of the fragrance as I can. Each breath contains a variance upon a theme: sweet cedar, balsam firs, wildflowers, and earth musk. I stand there at times, in the moment. The rain is pouring down, the sounds of patter on my brim hat, wearing too small a yellow raincoat and try to memorize these smells, these sights and this feeling. I forget for an instant why I have a silver whistle around my neck, I snap to vigilance, I am on the look-out for bears. Two nights ago, a porcupine awakened me by chewing on the cottage. Banging on the walls and bathroom window only gave the creature pause. I had to get dressed, flashlight in hand, out the back deck, around the bedrooms to the pump house, open and close the lid with a bang, proceed to the front, across the front deck, to the side of the sunroom and there, about to scurry under Big Red, a porcupine. My light shooing the prickly quilled endanged species along until it disappeared from view by climbing a tree. This morning I got a call from Clara Lutomski, there had been a bear sighting on the Devil's Glen Road. A big black bear, apparently unperturbed by people who had just been bicycling or jogging along, nor by dogs barking.

As it has been gently raining all day on and off, I did not feel compelled to dash off on my daily walk. The bear alarm only added to my indolence, glued as I was to my MacIntosh screen. Leaning into the afternoon, it was becoming apparent that my delay, or wishful thinking of finding a clearing window in the weather were for naught. Distant rumbles of thunder had me casually check Environment Canada's doppler radar for this area and I saw that the drizzle was more likely to become a torrent and I had better be inside for that. So, dressing for the affair, I headed off into the over cast skies. I passed our Hydro line, seen to the right in sunlight rather than gloom, I headed down our roadway to take the road tour towards the Tyler's rather then penetrate deeper into the bush by going to the green gate. It was in this early stage of my journey that I encounter the perfume that accompanied me in various degrees for the rest of my walk.

I am back now. There were no bear sightings by me. There was this ying and yang, so pleased to walk the bush in the rain, so emotionally aroused and alert to possible danger. The creatures both seen and talked about, plus the sensations felt and imbibed are part of why I come up here.