MindSpinner

I am cleaning out the closet that houses family albums and boxes of pictures. Well, not exactly. I am looking at pictures from the closet I’m supposed to be cleaning. Thing is, there’s not anybody to tell me that I’m supposed to be cleaning, so maybe there is no “supposed to.” I mean, it’s not as if my mother mentioned in our latest phone conversation how long it has been since I cleaned my closets.

I am looking at pictures, then, and my house is in the mess that houses are in when things are dragged out of the places where we stash them. (I’ve even found that once upon a time, probably in the ’90’s, I bought a computer repair kit from CompUSA with gizmos I don’t even understand - and stashed it in a closet. It looks to me as if I have the means to solder something - who knew?)

In the first picture box I opened, I found the shot in which a two-year-old Catapult Kid meets the Atlantic Ocean. Of all the photographs I took when he was small, none better captures the spirit of the child than this.

I’m postponing my spring wildflower walk until next weekend.

The weather’s not quite right. First there was the storm that brought the cold.

Today there is the snow.

I had something a little different in mind .

Snail shell on the trail to the fire tower

Fossils in a stone in the garden path

Lichen on a log

On Thursday, my daughter and I hiked to the old Forest Service tower atop the mountain that rises near my mother’s home. I remember the days when the tower was manned by a ranger who kept an eye out for forest fires. My uncle drove my cousins and me up to see it in a jeep when we were young, and I’ve hiked up now and then in years since. On a clear day, the view extends for miles and miles. Thursday was not a clear day, but the walk was still worthwhile.

The first thing to do was hop across the barrier that’s been in place for years now. At first, the road rises slowly, and it is much grassier than it used to be.

Much of the way up is graced, in July, by wild Black-Eyed Susans, blackberries mostly not yet ripe, and Sweet William.

We flushed at least eight wild turkeys.

The path grew steeper and rockier until it resembled not so much a road as a dry streambed full of boulders. And finally, when we getting worn out, we reached our destination.

The tower’s closed now; nobody has to stay up there to watch for fires anymore, but the view remains worth the climb.

On the way down, we picked a bowl of wild blackberries to take to my mother, who has climbed this mountain many, many times but cannot do so any more, and we picked up a small flat rock to add to the stone path through the garden back at home.

Next time, we’ll take a different trail just a few hundred yards up the road.

It is true that, for financial reasons, our getaways are pretty much limited to family visits. But you won’t hear me whining, given the view from my mother’s back yard. Spending time with family is priceless, and the place makes a visit into something of a vacation.