NORTH BOUNDARY – DÉJÀ VU

Judy was up and out the door to make the rounds at Curves by 8:30. Me, well, I was up by 9, or so, and heating up the oven and starting the coffee to drip. I popped 3 biscuits in the oven, and hit the bathroom, and by the time I was out, the biscuits and coffee were done.

When Judy got home she made her wonderful southern “white” thick gravy, while I scrambled 3 eggs and fried 2 pieces of “light” beef baloney!

After my second cup, I took a shower and shaved, and we were out the door to the community center where we both voted an early ballot, marking our selections by shading in a rectangular box with a number 2 pencil.

We then zipped about 12 miles up the road toward Oak Ridge, passed K-25, where I used to work, and on to the west entrance to the North Boundary Greenway. Yes, I’ve written about it before, but we love to walk there.

It’s a beautiful, usually isolated, easy walk of about a mile and a half out to the 4^th bridge, the largest one on the walk that crosses Popular Creek. We love the slight rolling hills that make you begin to sweat, but there are also long flat stretches that wind their way through the DOE property. The three mile round trip is just about all we really care to do.

It was another beautiful, dry, fall day, with the temperature just below 70, a light breeze, and lots of colorful leaves rustling all around us. It has been so dry here this summer and fall that you are really pressed to find brilliant colors this year. However, there are subtle red, yellow, orange, and still lots of green leaves around, but there is a lot of brown mixed in too.

Ron bicycled the route just a few days earlier and had told me about a new beaver dam just off on the right side of the second bridge you cross after leaving the highway.

There it was – such a masterpiece of construction too! It amazes me how they instinctively know just how to perfectly build a dam, seeming to know how much of an area the backwater will cover. Their lodge must have been further up stream, because we could not see it from the bridge, but you can bet it was up there somewhere, with a safe little family unit proudly surveying their domain.

Judy posed proudly with her new “hiking stick” that Steve, her sister Terri’s husband, made for her. It’s a strong hickory stick, tapered to an epoxy tip at the bottom. Steve cut groves into the top for grip, and inset an emerald stone, her birthstone, into the very top. Down the top forward side he carved “Lucy Dragon”. Lucy is the moniker she was awarded after leaving her purse in a public restroom in Key West! Luckily, some honest person turned it in to the police and she got everything back before the cruise ship sailed. We were truly blessed…again!

Steve has been on a mission of making hiking sticks for all the Dragons, and I think he only has one more to deliver. He has 19 acres of fine Tennessee forest, so he doesn’t have to look too far from his workbench for the raw materials.

I encourage you to get out and vote, and to take a nice long walk down some country gravel road before winter comes. They’ll both do you good!

There are other shots on my Flickr page!