my secret walk

This is where I go when I can't stand to sit indoors at the messy lunchroom table making idle chitchat. There's no time for that nonsense in the middle of the summer, not when a place like this beckons!

This mowed path runs along the top of a berm with a fish rearing pond on one side and a river on the other. Thickets of honeysuckle, grapevine, staghorn sumac, and other shrubs line the pond side, while tall willows and other trees shade the path from the river side. Through these trees I can hear the water rushing over rocks.

The pond now contains young muskies and minnows, plus crayfish, turtles, frogs, and other critters. A family of geese was lounging on the other side of the pond in the sun. Red winged blackbirds called from the cattails and bulrushes at the far end. Sometimes I will startle a great blue heron or green heron from the shore. Today's bird sightings included a male cardinal, catbird, red breasted nuthatch, and a male redstart, which kept calling to me until I located his flashy presence.

I don't know if many other people know that this area is considered open to the public, or have the idea to go walking there, because I never have seen anyone else there at noon. I'm happy about that, though; this is my place to disappear for ten or fifteen minutes in the middle of the day.