walkin' around

We did some walking this weekend. Yesterday, we walked into our little village for haircuts, some errands, and a stop at our favorite coffee shop. We of course ran into all sorts of people we know and got to catch up with our hairdresser, someone we see more often than we see most of our friends.

Later, we walked back into town for dinner, a concert at our local theater (excellent guitar and flute duos), and home again.

Today we decided to walk in the woods. Near us, there's a town where Mass Audubon has bought property adjacent to town land of two types, belonging to the "Conservation Trust" and "Conservation Commission." We had a fairly good map. And man, are we glad we had long sleeves on. After the rains this week, all the insects in the universe seem to have been born. We walked past a pond and a marsh, met almost no one on the trail except for a woman on horseback, and we saw a heron. We kept following the map until we realized that we had no idea where we were.

I should say that some of the trails had very helpful markings, but none of those were reflected on the map, which was becoming increasingly useless. We were somewhere on the edge of a golf course, so we got onto their cart path. Everyone we talked to had no idea where they were either -- it's a stunningly beautiful place that people must travel to from long distances.

We finally wound our way past many friendly people to the club house and stumbled inside, likely looking completely ridiculous -- everyone else was neatly dressed in long shorts and polo shirts. We looked like sun-fearing monsters of the deep, I'm sure.

We eventually made our way to the owners' office. She kept shaking her head and saying she had no idea how we ended up where we were. Finally, she called out "PJ! Could you please drive these people to their car?" We got a lift and suddenly there we were, back where we started.

As if to confirm our luck, nearer to home, we ran into an old coworker out for a stroll with his five-day old baby and the rest of his family. We got to tell him and his wife in person how happy we are for their good news. A nice cap to a very pleasant weekend.