An Evening Walk on July 11, 2019

I haven't taken many walks on the land this year, although my wife would argue with that statement. It probably seems to her that I'm forever leaving for a walk, going west across the corral, heading out across the tree rows out there, putting up with pesky flies and mosquitoes, doing who knows what.

If I walk out with my camera and a beer in my pocket, then it's just one of these sentimental strolls through the places I've put so much of my energies into over the past 48-some years. Sometimes, I just stand in one spot for several minutes, listening to the sounds around me, just looking at the landscape, the clouds and their play above the contours of the varying heights of trees, or how stages of light affect the scene.

Tree rows in July are still distinct although grown up in grass. I will mow the rows out in late August or September according to my CRP requirements.

I might pull weeds from around a struggling small tree, pull spring debris away so the sunlight can reach it, and talk encouragingly to it, "Whoa! Looky here! Don't you look great!" Stuff like that ... weird stuff like that. Well, these trees are in a sense my children, my legacy for after I'm gone--if climate change and future landowners are discriminate and allow them to fully mature. So in the meantime--my time--I take pride and promise in a place I can walk anytime I want. And, I might even bring that beer back with me, unopened.

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