Sunny Weekend

I hiked seven miles barefoot on Saturday. I didn't want to get my shoes dirty, and I wanted to be able to cross streams, plus one of my goals is to toughen my feet for barefoot walking. It was very warm and sunny. The recent floods caused the streams to overflow their banks, washing away the leafmould, leaving banks of sand and tufts of bright moss and Christmas fern under the dappled canopy. Never did the woods look so clean.

I passed a number of people in the trails: groups of laughing young college lads, late-twenty-something couples with their dogs, middle-aged men with a teenaged daughter or two. I glanced up to see one of the college lads had left behind his friends and was standing atop a bank watching me. He was excited to see how my feet were doing. I was excited to see he was wearing the same barefoot shoes I have. We talked about it for a bit.

 This morning I tried praying the Little Office of the BVM in Latin. It took me 50 minutes to recite Matins and Lauds. I thought I was familiar enough with the English to glean the sense of the Latin, but I spent considerable time consulting the English text again. By the end my mouth was sore, my throat was dry, and my tongue was twisted. I admire the monks who prayed this whole Office in addition to the Divine Office.

This afternoon I went for a run, but my feet were sore from yesterday's hike. I walked to the library and read from an essay by Walter Pater, interrupted by an invitation from Dad to join him for dinner.

My sister and Lucy sat by me while I nailed all the loose nails back in my dad's deck. Lucy liked to watch the hammer. My sister and I talked for a long time, even continuing along the whole walk down to the creek through the woods, trailing behind my dad and Bryan and the dogs. The dogs loved fetching sticks from the creek, not just Dad's dogs that do it every day, but my sister's dogs too. I carried Lucy back up the dirt road to the house. Earlier she was playful, laughing and kicking and making babbles. I noticed in the woods and at he creek she got very quiet and still, and her eyes were as if in a trance. It really did seem as if she were in contemplation.

Dad's two friends had the food almost ready when we got back. It turned out the horse I couldn't find had been dead for a month. Lightning struck the barn during the bad storms and Uncle Steve found her dead on the barn floor the next day. We had huge ribeye steaks.