THANKS FOR THE HELP

VIEW ON WAY HOME FROM SHOPPING

Our bird feeder restaurant must be highly rated. Whenever we count the different kinds of birds, the sum almost always comes out to an even number. Which to us, says that the birds are bringing a date to our eatery.

OUTSIDE OUR LIVING ROOM WINDOW

On Sunday, a friend and I snowshoed. This episode reinforced my idea that we all have an angel or angels looking after us. 

I’ve also heard, from an intelligent person, that some people need angels more than others. I think my hiker friend and I rely heavily on our angels.

​The weather forecast was for above zero temperatures. I therefore sprayed silicone on my large pair and my small pair of snowshoes. The silicone helps prevent wet snow from sticking to the metal teeth. I wear different sized snowshoes depending upon the depth and state of the snow.

TWO SNOW STORMS AGO

Later on, I pulled into my friend’s driveway. I think I may have been whistling a tune, but I’m not sure. I jumped out of the truck, possibly still whistling, walked to the door, grabbed the door knocker and gave the door some hefty knocks.

That’s when I stopped whistling. Had I remembered my snowshoes? I couldn’t have been that stupid. I rushed to the truck, opened the tail-gate. I was that stupid! &*(!! 

My friend told me she’d borrowed a pair from the library. Ipso facto, she had two pairs. Her own pair had been slightly injured, but was still useable. 

​Thank-you angel or angels.

SUE'S CAR

My friend told me while we were inside her closed-in porch  that she had a ski pole I could use. However, would I be so kind as to loosen the poles’ connections so they could be stretched out and made longer? 

I quickly and carelessly grabbed one pole and began to tug and turn. My hand slipped, the pole shot out to my right and bang, it smacked heavily into the window. An expensive window located on the inside inner door. 

It was close, but it didn’t break. It could have been, relatively speaking, a rather expensive and catastrophic inconvenience? 

​Thank-you angel.

PAPER DELIVERY DOG FOR SALE

Then we were off. My friend wanted to ski along Bras D’or Lake. The trail-head begins off the road and is a straight pathway which leads to the water. It ends at a boat house. Another trail runs along the shoreline. It’s a great pathway for getting a chance to see all the rich folks’ cottages and boat houses. It also offers hikers a wonderful view of the wide, snow-covered lake. 

Oh, oh! My friend informed me she didn’t know exactly where the trail-head was. I didn’t either.

​So, we cruised along the tall snow banks until we saw a trail. We weren’t sure if it was the right one, but it was a trail. 

PAPER DELIVERY DOG ON DOWN TIME

I donned her small pink snowshoes. I felt like a he-man as I strapped them on.

We began the trek by climbing over a large snow bank and then we began hiking through the untouched snow. 

We quickly came to suspect that this wasn’t the trail we’d been on last year. Last year’s trail didn’t run through a marsh. We slogged through the snow while staying close to the tree line so we would have a better chance of not going through the ice and water that we sometimes noticed after we’d lifted our feet.

​The lake was supposed to be in front of us, but we saw no sign of it. 

RUNNING OUT OF ROOM

Suddenly, up ahead, I saw a white pick-up drive by. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The trail was supposed to end at a boathouse and the lake. Not a road. My friend asked me if I might have been hallucinating. Was it a cold weather mirage? I said I didn’t think so.

We finally arrived at the end of the trail without falling into the water. Should we thank one of our angels for this? Don’t know, but just in case,

​"Thank-you, angel.” 

HEAVY WITH SNOW

There was the road and no lake. Where the heck was the lake?

​We spotted a cottage. It was to the left of us. Surprising, because the cottages were supposed to be on the right side. And, voila, there was the lake, right in front of the cottage. The lake was also in the wrong place. Who moved everything?

ANY ONE FOR BASKETBALL

We trespassed. Broke the law. Cut through the cottage lot and found the lake-side trail. On our illegal trespass route we passed a beautiful little cottage. It reminded me of an angel’s bungalow.

TAKING A SHORT CUT

When we got to the shoreline trail I saw the boat house. It was a way down the trail and to our left. It was supposed to have been at the end of the correct trail. 

ANGELS'S HOUSE

Because the slogging on the wrong trail had been so strenuous we decided to head to the boat house and then take the proper trail back to the road. Where we suspected we’d have to climb over a large snowbank, remove our snowshoes and then walk about quarter of a K or so down the road so we could get back to my truck.

​Anyway, we hiked to the boat house, and then hiked back to the road.

BOAT HOUSE

It was heavy going. However, we finally made it to the road, climbed over a snowbank and there was my truck. Parked fifty feet away. We had hiked on a trail that was only about fifty feet from the correct one. 

Thank-you angel or angels. I think.

Write to me and I’ll send you a topographical map of our Sunday route. Ha.

​

RATTY AND SNIFFLES

I hope, when I’ve passed on, that folks will think of me the way Thomas Hardy expressed it in his poem:

​“When the present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
“He was a man who used to notice such things?” 
            Thomas Hardy, Afterwards

SUE AND BUSTER ON OUR LANE