Long Walk In a Lovely Country

A broad vale next to Lake Champlain, early morning, before the heat, barbed wire fence next to a field where John Arnold’s sheep are grazing. Tall grass is hiding most of them, white humps moseying about there, their heads poke up as there chewing. Arnold’s House is there on my right, old Victorian, last century, nice place, but a little faded, John has put off fixing it up, wool prices were not great last year. I’m not sure I want him to paint, kinda fits in better this way. A foothill juts out the next stretch, small cliffs rise up above the road, soft, crumbly rock interrupted by tenacious trees with clinging roots casting shadows over the pavement. Way up high is an overlook, local trail, popular day hike, been up there a half-dozen times, looks west to the Adirondacks, across the long, thin stretch of lake. It’s too hot to hike it today, better in leaf season anyhow. Stock car race-track on my left, they run Friday and Saturday, big white trailers are pulling in, tonight’s competitors arriving, it’s too early for spectators. Fun watching them spin rubber through dirt, and the local children love it, I guess the fathers do as well, or maybe the hots dogs and beer. The beer is cheap, run-of-the-mill, but those hot gods are really good. I wonder where they’re buying them? Two-mile mark, a broad wetland, marshy ground, cattails and beaver dams, tall grasses poking form water, a swarm of annoying insects, attracts dozens of pleasant birds, each marked with their own fine color. People fish here in the summer, like to hunt ducks in the autumn. Easy to imagine nothing’s changed, that it’s just like primeval days, but a collapsed barn in the woods tells the truth of its history, That this was once a farmer’s field, it only became a swamp when the beavers were reintroduced, probably fifty years back now. Nature likes to remake itself. Well, my legs are starting to hurt, time to start heading back now.