Fall Back

Fall gets me to thinking about the Ravlin Hill house. That place was always especially beautiful in the fall of the year.

The best part about the old place in Clymer was the lay of the land. It was a great dog walking property.

It's twenty acres were mainly a big hayfield with woods along the back and a creek at the far end. I kept a path mowed all the way back which made things easy. The dogs knew right where they were heading, and once the hay grew up a bit, they could only see the path, and they rarely strayed from it. Guen is the only one we had to keep on a leash, her terrier nature might get her in trouble when wildlife would pop up out of the tall grass. We saw woodchucks, turkey, deer, snapping turtles making their way to the Amish neighbors newly dug pond, a box turtle and a snake or two during our twice a day jaunts down and back accompanied usually by only birdsong.

Ying Li took awhile to get used to that walk. At first I think he was so overwhelmed by the vast open space that he just didn't know what he was going to do. He wouldn't walk at all, and would have to be carried. After a while we saw that he would gladly walk back to the house, it was the going away part that he didn't care for. So Ying got toted until we turned around, then he got brave and would follow us home. Well it didn't take long for that tune to change, and pretty quickly he became the first out of the gate and the scout for the walking party.

We all loved walking that place. But fall walks were somehow more memorable. Fall looked best on old Ravlin Hill. Fall walks had to be savored and taken often, for when winter came to that hill, the path was gone 'til spring, buried beneath countless billions of snowflakes that somehow crept up and whitened the fields and sky, just as they are now beginning to float through tonight's coldly shining moonlight.