Category Archives: Park

Small Stones

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Love?

I’m brushing my teeth and Sam is pressing his head into my leg, one eye buried and the other looking at me in the mirror. I imagine that attention and longing as love for me, but my rational mind knows it probably isn’t.

What it probably is:

“Mom’s brushing her teeth, that means getting ready, that means a walk–I love walking”

or

“Mom’s brushing her teeth, that means brushing my teeth–I love the way the toothpaste tastes, like chicken” *drool*

Either way, I love the feeling of his head pushing against my leg, the weight and tangibility of that gesture, and the longing in that one eye, looking at me while I look back. It doesn’t have to mean love for him for it to mean that for me, to be love for me.

Heron

At first light, in the still dark of dawn, a heron flies overhead like some kind of prehistoric bat. It lands high in a cottonwood. I feel like I am walking in a dream, it’s so strange to see a heron perched so high, its form black against the dark blue sky.

picture by rhys asplundh

Signs of Spring at Lee Martinez Park

Grass greening up, trees budding out, sprinklers back on. Porta Potties gone, doors to bathrooms unlocked and water turned back on.

A warm wind and four tennis balls in the dog park, two laps around.The lightening flash of the backside of a White Tailed Deer excites Dexter, makes him pull at his leash. As soon as we are past it, he slows, stops and checks behind us, hoping to see it again.

People we’ve never seen out on bikes or running with their dogs.

A woodpecker flies into the metal dome covering the lights by the basketball courts and taps a message that echos out.

Confusion

The noise I first think is my neighbor moving her trash can to the curb is actually the robin back on the fence, flying against my window for the fourth morning in a row.

I wonder again if it’s one of the babies we “raised” last year. Has he found his way back? Will he find love?

one of last year's babies, having just learned to fly

Small Stone: Big Moon

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This morning was one of those walks when I wished I had my camera. Not so much to capture the view or be able to share it, but to have proof that I wasn’t just dreaming it. The magic of it was such that it was hard to believe it was real.

The full moon was at first covered by a fog of clouds, blurry and golden, hovering over a black, leafless tree.

Then, it rose above the fog, bright white and clear, lighting up the clouds below, illuminating 14 shades of white, blue, and gray.

Later, it disappeared completely behind a bank of thick clouds, with only the faintest glow marking it in the still dark sky.

Then the dawn and clouds hid it entirely, turning the snow a light blue.

At McMurry Ponds, I breathe in how lucky I am to live here. And by here, I don’t just mean Northern Colorado, or even Fort Collins, but this specific spot northwest of the center of town. Walking around the back pond, to the north is the edge of Creekside Garden Center with it’s forest of young trees and barn with peeling white paint where the foxes like to nap, to the south on the other side of the pond is the Poudre River where last week we saw a Blue Heron fly the length of it with a beaver and three ducks swimming below, behind us the sun is rising, turning the treeline orange, and in front to the west, there’s an old white farmhouse with three large Blue Spruce in the yard and the moon sits high above them, with the Foothills, Horsetooth Rock and the Reservoir behind and below it. This is where I live.

Back at the beginning of the trail and the end of our walk, the pale moon sits against a bright blue sky. Goodnight moon, good morning beautiful day.