The Blessings of Autumn Continue

After working 8 years to get tenure (takes longer when you do it twice), and finally getting word yesterday, I figured I could come in late (~1030) one morning. So, I packed up my pup, and headed south to Michigan Hollow environs. (We can’t all beat the crap out of Hector all the time, ‘specially with CowPoke Weik and the missus drifting into town). Started off by working downstream of the old beaver dam, having espied some nice alders there last winter.

Mindful of the warm weather and disdainful of fashion, I wore my old Finger Lakes Marathon long sleeved T under the Filson jacket. Andy’s boots completed the ensemble. I suspect he’ll want to claim the shirt too.

The beavers have been busy. It was a hellish nightmare, and I recalled thinking I really ought to have left word with Julie as to where I was heading. I vividly envisioned a Pongee stick puncture or twelve. This was not a lot of fun. Andy, sorry about the new tear in your boots. Nor was it in keeping with my vision of a contemplative stroll, full of reflections of career, place, friends, cycles, and all that romantic rot.

Backtrack to the backside of the old pond, now a series of small ponds surrounded by well-nigh impenetrable puckerbrush: multiflora, autumn olive, etc. But on the margin, there are gorgeous stands of old pine with hazel growing up. These stands drop off to the thick stuff to the East. Wonder of wonders, a bird flushed from one of these pines, left to right, and wonder-of-wonders, I dropped him with a single shot. To be honest, Conley had nothing to do with this: he was off busting through the thick stuff the way he ought to have been. But I whistled him over, gave him the line, and out he came with the bird…a purty brown phase young of the year.

I’d post a picture but Julie has the durned camera to take pictures of our kids in some danged neighborhood Halloween parade. Strange priorities.

Conley’s first NYS grouse. Life is good. Back to work.