Welcome to My World

Every time I go out running, and that is every morning

I wish I could bring you along. But you are usually sleeping, or at least not in the mood to stretch yourself out and then get very sweaty. 

You would think I'd tire of this road, running it every day, but the fact is that watching it change its clothes and its soundtrack each day fascinates me endlessly.

There are always surprises. Sometimes it's the deep violet blue of the morning's first chicory.

 

Sometimes it's pink chicory. I know of five plants on this curve that are pink. I don't know how common that is, but it feels singular to me.

 

There's one intergrade that is a bewitching periwinkle bluepink.

Sometimes it's an eastern tailed blue mimicking a flying bit of chicory. I love ETBL's. They are a most friendly and confiding butterbug. You can see the tail on his left hind wing.

Sometimes it's a hayfield, suddenly cut, with meadowlarks circling overhead not knowing what in the world they should do. (They wound up leaving the next day, but that's OK, because I had seen their babies fledge weeks earlier). If there's one thing meadowlarks know about, it's haying.

 Sometimes it's an unexpected curve in a treeline that reminds me of England.

 Or black-eyed Susans against a misty tree scrim.

And always at my side Chet Baker, sweet companion of the morning and my life. In him I have a dogmometer. I can tell how hot it is by whether he's in front of me, beside me or yards behind. Over about 82 degrees and I'm liable to have to wait for the boy. Under 80 and he waits for me.

 We always stop and think at the cemetery. We breathe and sweat and are glad to be alive and not having a red cedar and pizen ivy growing up through our rib cages.