MindSpinner

Next weekend, as long as it’s not raining, I’m planning an excursion to the restored Shaker Village that is one of my favorite places to go. I won’t stay the night this time but will just drive up early, buy a ticket, and tell the person at the ticket desk that I’ll be walking the wildflower trail that crosses the fields, winds through the woods, then along the river gorge and finally down to the winter home of the Dixie Belle, the riverboat that offers river tours beginning later this month. Spring wildflowers should be in bloom along the trail and through the village. I’ll be taking the wonderful camera and re-taking pictures I lost last year when my laptop expired. I’ll find the tree that makes a little house out of its arching branches, next to an old stone chimney. Spring will be the same, but the walk will be utterly different, because I will be alone this time. And the pictures will be different, too, because they will be of horses and buildings and apple blossoms and wildflowers but not the companion who walked with me on an idyllic day.

It will all still be beautiful, I tell myself. Spring comes every year. So I’m going for that walk again. I will make that walk my spring ritual. I will don my jeans, my walking shoes, and my backpack camera bag and set off. I will take a sandwich for lunch and Kleenex in case it is the eye, not the lens, that blurs.