Hi everyone and welcome once again to my journal. Today let’s turn the pages back a bit to a time in the past and see what we have for us to enjoy today.

It’s a sunny but frosty fall morning in October. I was thinking it would be a great day to go out and dig for old bottles. I mentioned this to dad, after all we don’t want to waste a nice day, there won’t be too many left before winter arrives. I was just thinking the same thing, he said, but why waste the day digging for old bottles, that’s a lot of work for nothing. And bottles are not interesting. Let’s go looking for insulators, something that at least has some historical value. And I know just the place too, remember that old road we saw last week? Looking on the map here it shows that it’s not far from the railway tracks, and it’s a new section for us to check out. Soon we were in the car driving to this new spot. It was close to an old townsite so maybe I can find some bottles too. It didn’t take long to drive to that old road, which was beside a nice little lake. There was a large rocky island right in the middle of that lake too, it looked kind of out of place on that lake.

The road was good, at the beginning, but that didn’t last long. We came to a steep hill and the road had been washed out badly by some rainstorms that summer. We can’t drive that, said dad, guess we’ll have to walk from here. Or we could go somewhere else, I said, there’s a great spot to dig for some old bottles and…off we went walking up that steep hill. Finally at the top of the hill we could walk on level ground for a while. After about 10 minutes dad says, we need to turn off and walk through the trees here somewhere, get out the map. What map?, I asked. Dad looks at me. You didn’t bring the map?, he asked. You never told me to bring it, I said. I said to bring our lunch and the map is on the dining room table. Right, I said, I brought the lunch, you just said the map was on the table, you didn’t say to bring it. Dad just looked down and shook his head. He used to do that a lot.

You said it wasn’t far, I reminded him, so why not just cut through the trees right here, we’ll likely hear a train soon anyway. Dad agreed. This time of year there were lots of trains, so we can just follow the sound if we are a bit off from where we want to go. Dad actually went first this time, usually he wants me to go first. It was easy walking through the pines, not much undergrowth along here. Soon we heard a train. We’re actually going in the right direction, I said. Dad just looked at me. It was quite a distance away though. We started going down a gentle slope with a lot of spruce trees. They have low branches, unlike the pines. You go first, said dad. Naturally. I made sure not to let go of the branches too soon this time, dad never watched for things like that.

AAAAAAAA!!! Ooooff, ohhhhh. Hmm, guess I should have mentioned that rock sticking up right there. Didn’t you see the rock?, I asked. No, I didn’t see the rock, dad said rather sarcastically. At least your glasses didn’t fall off this time, I remarked. Bonehead, said dad. (for my new readers, dad said bonehead a lot when we were together, I finally decided it must mean he’s enjoying himself. It can also be a nice way of saying, “you’re not very smart”, or, “you’re an idiot”, something like that, but I prefer my interpretation better). Dad got up okay and off we went again. Around here it’s basically a lot of rocky hills, lakes, rivers, not much flat land. We came to a spot where we would have to go down this rather steep hill. Not as bad as some we have climbed down, I said. Surprisingly dad agreed. You go first, he said. Naturally.

To be continued.

©2020 Steve McLeod.