January 6, Again

 The vultures of time have completed another loop around - one year higher up, looking down.

It's January 6.  January 6, 2020, 5 years ago, we finished putting our suitcases and stuff in the car - enough for three months.  Bob took one last look at the land, said goodbye to the chickens, hugged all the cats - said he would miss them, and see them in three months.  Took a deep breath and we drove off to Gainesville.

He never came home again.  5 years later, that still hurts.

Last year, I got through this period by emptying out the barn.  This year - it's cutting a path through the woods.  And I have to say that I'm loving it.  Many times now I have taken my afternoon coffee and reading down to the stream.  Some days I get a stretch where there's just a little to clip and clean out of the way.  Other days I work for an hour to gain 10 feet.  (I limit myself to an hour at a time because the arm is still healing)

There have been some areas that I can't even tell the best way to cut the path.  It's a matter of clearing a couple of feet, and then deciding where the next few steps could be.  There have been some bends where obviously the stream had come out of the bank and I had a lot of debris to drag aside.

It's been good exercise, to say the least, and I love roaming around in my woods again.

This week I decided to tackle it from the other end, behind the house, where there is a lot of storm damage.  It was slow going - I knew about where the creek was (there is a bend that eventually takes it under the bridge on the highway) and I knew I had to go to the left.  But the fallen trees and huge root balls (and treacherous holes that they made) kept herding me to the right.  Eventually I was able to shift to the left, and glory be! caught a sight of the stream.  I made my way to it - and for a short distance there was only some light cutting to clear the way.  That's when I spotted this crazy tree.

I promptly decided that it was a toll booth.  The tree was just standing there, holding out its hand.

I had an irresistible urge to pay a toll.  A quick inventory didn't yield much - I had hand clippers, loppers, my wedding ring, and my phone.  Hmmmm.  I used the hand clippers to cut off a bit of my hair.

It must have worked.  I stood up, looked around, and there - through a huge clump of palmettos - I saw it.

 

I had to cut my way over to it but yes, it's still there.  Happy dance.

Just for fun, I posted my adventures on a FaceBook page called "This is Fae Propaganda If I Ever Saw It" - a site mostly for pictures of things that could be considered magical.  I was not expecting the response - I did one post about the "toll bridge" tree, and another about the lamp post (without mentioning that Bob and I put it there some 30 years ago).  I got some 700 reactions and 100 comments on each one.

The funny part was all the shock in that I would actually give my hair to the Fae!  Some people were serious - comments about what a frightening thing to do.  Some of the commentators (oddly, mostly men, which begs some sociological research) gave dire warning like "I do not think that you understand what you are getting yourself into."  But it's been a lot of fun.  Especially after I posted the one with the lamp post - Narnia comments abound.

And maybe because it's a gray and rainy day (which will preclude my heading down to the woods) I might just put on the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and snuggle down with the cats for the day.