A Memorable Country Chorus

We've been raising the bar on our walking lately going for four to six miles a day. Today, after several hours waiting for a break in the rain, we looked at each other in that way couples do when they have whole conversations without speaking.

I go off to get my super-duper, no-way-I'm-getting-soaked two-piece Gortex jacket and pants. To emphasize the severity of the rain situation, the last time I wore this whole get-up was in an African monsoon. At the bottom of the stairs, I find not my husband but this fellow in some anachronistic outfit resembling a character from a well-known ad from the 70's. Now if you don't know who I'm talking about, you're most likely a millennial and, why aren't you on Instagram or TikTok anyway?!

But I say nothing (rare for me) and off we go on our usual stroll through and out the neighborhood. We splash past the old fox den up the street, down the lane past the creek, the chipmunk holes, the bunnies whose mothers told them to freeze and they would become invisible (we don't ruin their fantasy), and on beyond the 'hood into the wide, wide world of the old state road ambling along the wild backside of our little manicured enclave.

Even including high school nights out with friends counting stars while counting on our parents not to wait up, NEVER in my life have I walked the double yellow lines of a road so much. Anyway, wandering repeatedly down a country lane gives one pause to stay in the moment if for no other reason than to not be flattened by an over-caffeinated UPS driver.

So, we pass Wayne's place below the road with its goats, pigs, chickens, and riotous Animal Farm conversations, and enter the "Sanctuary of Sacred Birds." This is where dozens of red and yellow finches, bluebirds, occasional purple martins, and diving barn swallows criss-cross overhead, mocking our current somewhat sorry existence. We saunter toward the cow pastures and fields of clover, chickweed, and random red poppies. I start laughing at Robert looking like the Gordon's Fisherman of old. Then my good-natured hubby casts an invisible line for me. Except he's casting an arm with an extended finger. I bust up laughing and start yelling, "Stop it! I'm-about-to-pee-my-pants!"

Suddenly my guffawing is joined by loud braying. Then manic hee-hawing commences. It riccochets across the mountain hollow, and I imagine barn doors shaking off their hinges. It's unclear if Maxwell Thumperdink is laughing at Rob or just joining in with my "buck-snort" howling. Rob starts motioning hand signals like he's directing planes onto the ribbon of asphalt wandering up this hollow, and the donkey brays for more.

This young fellow whom we christened with the aforementioned name has decided we're his pandemic pals. Maybe because we bring him apples and carrots every day. Then he looks at me with those brown lucid eyes and I scurry to pick him large bunches of flowering clover. It's just another day on the boardgame of "Pandemia" that we waltz through daily to keep ourselves both insanely silly and sanely grounded.