I Was Thinking, Again

As this week progressed, I was thinking, again.  You may remember that Larry would say, “Don’t you ever stop thinking?”  Well, I suppose the answer is still, “No.”  We are always thinking.  Even when people are meditating, I think they are thinking.

Thinking …  For example, I was watching my dog and the dogs I take care of nosing around the wood pile.  As if something of great interest lived there.  When I pulled wood from that pile, I found things.  Seeds.  Leaves.  And, unpleasant as it sounds, I found dried poop – close to the top of the wood pile.  All of this between the layers of wood.  Wood boards from the palettes.  Round wood pieces of branches.  I thought about living in Walt’s cabin up the canyon – Devil’s Gulch, it was.

When I moved out of Walt’s cabin (where I lived while working at Hewlett Packard in Loveland), Larry and I cleaned out the adjacent shed.  In that shed, I had stored an old wardrobe.  It was old.  Very, very old.  It had a long section for hanging clothes.  A shorter, box-like section with a mirror in the door.  And, it had four stacked drawers.  A nine-lined ground squirrel lived in that shed.  As we took other things out of the wardrobe, we realized that the squirrel was really living in it.  I pulled out the top drawer and found a mound of twigs and feathers and soft materials.  Very much in the shape of an igloo – clearly living quarters for the squirrel.  The second drawer revealed a cache of potpourri.  And, in the third drawer, the squirrel had stored seeds.  The bottom drawer was the squirrel’s bathroom.  I’d never seen that arrangement before.  In truth, I knew very little about the living arrangements of a nine-lined ground squirrel, but we left the critter’s living quarters as we found them.

And, so, the layers I found in the wood pile reminded me very directly of that squirrel’s “house.”  I don’t have nine-lined ground squirrels, but I do have regular squirrels – that are too big to be living between the pieces of wood in the pile.  I’m wondering if mice have been occupying the pile.  I’ve never seen one in all of the pushing and shoving of the wood to get it into the house to burn.  I think this is a mystery that won’t be solved soon.

As I watch the leaves fall from my trees and cover the grass and the graveled areas, I remember being a Brownie Scout.  The summer Scout day camp had us divided into age groups for activities.  All of the groups were putting on a short play on Friday; my group’s play was about autumn and falling leaves.  One child was a last flower of the summer.  All of the other girls were falling leaves.  I got to be the last leaf that covered and protected the last flower of summer.

One memory leads to another.  Thus, I also remember helping to make cocoa to drink with the lunches we’d brought from home.  The adult in charge put salt – SALT – into the cocoa mix.  That was when I learned that a little salt helps to enhance the sweetness of the drink.

Then, as I was thinking about Brownie summer camp, it called to the forefront my only other camp experience at a church camp.  It was a week long.  The first time I was ever away from my parents’ house to sleep over night.  I don’t think it was scary.  In fact, I think I really liked it – being old enough to be away from my family, over night.  And, not being afraid, I remember when it was time to depart from the church in my town to ride with someone (not my father – again, for the first time) to the church camp, my father gave me a good-bye kiss.  I think that was the only time my father ever kissed me.

Another first was drinking grapefruit juice for the first time.  Meals were, of course, in the dining hall.  Long tables.  And, each cabin had clean-up duties.  Food was served family style.  And, the grapefruit juice – the glorious grapefruit juice – was served from very large, heavy metal pitchers.  Ice cold.  I’ve been a grapefruit kid, ever since.  Definitely, not orange juice; but, that’s another story.

Be Safe and Be Well

The Cranky Crone

Thoughtful comments are appreciated.