A Year of Morning Thanks

Sabbath

Two big stories on our long Sunday afternoon walk out in Oak Grove Park. First, a dead dear--not much left but a rack of ribs and a furless jaw, broken, undoubtedly, when the locals decided to feast, mid-winter probably, on what meat remained on the corpse. A rim of fur ran all the way around, and its hooves were visible. Didn't smell bad. But it was, according to my grandchildren's later reports to their mother, an amazing thing, very much worth a mention.

And this. At one point when they were bushed and thought we were lost, we stood just for a moment, catching our breath, when a hen pheasant decided she'd better skidaddle and flushed from a stand of grass a foot away from my grandson, sending both kids into adroit apoplexy. Wonderful.

On the first best Sunday afternoon of spring, the three of us--me and my grandkids--took a giant walk through the river hills. "I don't like hiking," my grandson said after ten minutes, at just about the moment we were snaking through through a darkened stand of scary scrub oaks. I don't know that he's ever been in a woods, an uncommon landscape out here on the plains.

My granddaughter thought that if we'd stumble on a doe with a fawn, the doe would charge and trample us all to death. I told her the only animals we'd be lucky enough to see would be scared to death of her, but she held my hand for just about the whole hour-long hike anyway.

Which was fine with Grandpa.

Church was fine yesterday, Sunday; but the Sabbath in the hills was unforgettable.