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Some friends of my wife are out of town and asked her if she’d drop by their farm and feed their animals and just check and make sure everything was okay. Being a good person and a good friend, and also someone with a degree in agriculture, she said yes and asked if I’d come along. Being a good spouse, I hope, anyway, I said yes. And also there was nothing else going on and it would be a chance to get out of the house. I’ve been to their farm several times and I like it in spite of the cows.

It’s not that I have anything against cows. They seem nice enough that it’s a shame they make such good hamburgers, and I actually like them as long as they’re on the other side of a very strong fence. Getting up close and personal with cows is something I do my best to avoid. It’s not that I believe they’re suddenly going to turn into snarling, murderous beasts. I know cows are pretty well domesticated and ones that are used to being around people can be quite gentle. They’re just very large animals that could easily knock me aside without a second thought even if they don’t mean to. Also in the back of my mind there’s this fear they might suddenly turn into snarling, murderous beasts.

So of course when we arrived the cows had somehow escaped from their enclosure.

Fortunately my wife, with the degree in agriculture, was able to do most of the herding of the cows, although I helped a little, mostly from a distance. Then I carried the buckets of feed out to the cows who stuck their heads in the trough before I could put the food in.

“Slap ‘em on the nose if they won’t get out of the way,” my wife yelled. Easy for her to say. She’s got a degree in agriculture. I was convinced slapping a cow would turn it into a snarling, murderous beast. Because there were two food troughs I was able to distract the cows by going to one and then the other and managed to only dump some of the food on cows’ heads.

Then I turned around and I was completely surrounded by the sheep who’d also gotten out of their enclosure. It’s completely irrational but being faced down by twenty-seven thousand hungry sheep was funny to me, whereas a single loose cow would make me want to get back in the car and lock all the doors.

The sheep were also easier to deal with. Unlike the cows, who are distinct individuals the sheep would move collectively. Get one doing in the right direction and the rest follow.

Then we had to collect the eggs even though I would have preferred to hang out with the sheep some more. Chickens may be small but I know they can be snarling, murderous beasts too. So my wife collected the eggs. After all she’s got a degree in agriculture.

For now at least Mondays mean getting up while it’s still dark. That will change as the days get longer, which will also mean the dogs getting up earlier because they’re triggered by daylight. The sunrise means it’s time for breakfast no matter when the sun rises and they have the advantage of being able to go back to sleep. And how they know it’s after 5PM, their usual supper time, when the sun sets a little later each day is beyond me.

Most of the time I don’t even think about the fact that my commute is more or less easterly. I’ve never stopped to look at a compass while driving and I don’t see too many cars with dashboard mounted compasses anymore. When I was a kid one of our next door neighbors had one of those in his car but it seemed like it wobbled so much with every bump and turn it was impossible to get a reliable reading. Then, when we were on a road trip with him he gave us a lengthy explanation of how he was navigating by the position of the sun, none of which explained how he managed to get lost, but that’s another story.

This morning, however, I found myself driving straight into the sun. I’d forgotten that this was a regular problem for bus drivers I rode with in the afternoons—they were going west and, twice a year, the sun would be in the imperfect position of hanging right over the road ahead. I always felt sorry for the bus drivers but I also just couldn’t bear to look.

This morning when faced with the sun I also had an advantage the bus drivers don’t: I could pull over and wait a few minutes until the sun wasn’t directly in my line of sight anymore. I also could have taken an alternate route and I wouldn’t get lost because I’d be navigating by the sun.

Have you ever walked down a path and ended up going for so long you start to wonder if it would ever end? That happened to me recently when I decided to take a walk down a local trail I’ve only seen part of. My wife said that since I don’t take the bus I don’t walk as much as I used to I should get out and walk, and while Radnor Lake has been my usual place she suggested the Richland Creek Greenway Trail as something a little closer to home and for a change of pace. She and I had walked about a quarter of a mile down it a couple of years ago and I’d wanted to go back. This time I decided I’d walk the entire thing.

I didn’t stop to check the trail map or even do any research before setting out because, hey, why would I? I drive by it regularly and it’s obviously a popular trail. As many people walk it I thought, how long could it be? It didn’t occur to me that at least some of those people, like my wife and I, walk part of the way down it then turn around and go back.

I will say this: most of it is a beautiful trail. Most of it follows Richland Creek, and there are a few spots where you can step off the trail and walk right down to the creek. A lot of people were down there with their dogs. Because it’s such a nice trail and because it was a beautiful day I passed a lot of people walking their dogs, and almost every dog I passed was either playing in the creek or soaking wet.

When I got to a bridge I was finally into terra incognita. But it wasn’t far and I just thought, well, I’ll see where this goes. It went through a wooded area, up over a hill, around a bend. A couple I’d seen earlier passed me and I thought, oh, I guess the path circles back around not too far up ahead.

Then for a long stretch I walked past part of the McCabe Golf Course, where I’d once tried out for my high school golf team, disastrously, but that’s another story, on one side and the creek on the other. Walkers were protected from errant balls by a tall net. As the path went up and over another hill and past homes I started to think, Wait, just how far does this go? Am I still on the right path? The absence of saguaros was the only thing that kept me from thinking I’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in Albuquerque.

There were plenty of people around so I wasn’t really worried, though. I just kept going, wondering how far I’d gone.

When I saw the Star Bagel Café I finally had at least some idea. The distance from the trailhead where I’d parked to the café is, by road, a little over four miles. I hadn’t walked that far because the trail had its own as-the-crow-flies direction but I still knew I’d gone pretty far. And it was still a beautiful day and there were plenty of people around. I felt fine, but I’d been on the trail long enough that I’d wondered if I should turn back. The café was my sign that really the only thing to do was keep going. I guessed, correctly, that it was approximately halfway and I was far enough in that I should just keep going.

With a wooded area on my right and a rise topped with railroad tracks on my left I laughed, wondering just how much farther it could go, and at that point the trail turned back onto a familiar stretch that led back to the parking lot.

Five miles in all. It was a fun walk and I plan to do it again, this time knowing what I’m in for, although that last part is why I’m glad I didn’t do any research. Part of the fun was knowing where I’d end up but not how I’d get there.

About a month ago I heard the sounds of trucks beeping and a few loud thumps early in the morning. Construction noises aren’t unusual in my neighborhood; pretty much any house that sells these days gets knocked down and replaced with something bigger. But when I looked out the window I saw approximately three thousand Nashville Metro trucks and a whole crew of workers in hard hats parked at the end of our driveway. Marks had been spray-painted on the street months earlier so I assumed the work had something to do with that. I walked up to see what was going on.

“Hey,” said one of the guys, smiling at me. “You don’t need to get out of your driveway, do you?”

He could have asked that before they decided to park their trucks right in front of it and completely demolish the end of our driveway, removing the big culvert pipe that goes under it for drainage. But I said no then asked how long they were going to be.

“Less than an hour,” he said. And he was right. I think it took them less than forty-five minutes to finish the job, installing a new culvert pipe and covering the whole thing with packed gravel. It wasn’t pretty—they removed the concrete walls that had been on either side—but it was functional and I thought maybe we could save up enough money to have new concrete walls installed on either side to help hold the gravel in place.

And then a little over a week ago I was about to start working when I heard construction sounds again. I looked out the window and once again there were approximately three thousand trucks parked in front of our driveway. I walked up to the street to see what they were doing.

“Hey,” said a different guy, smiling at me. “You don’t need to get out of your driveway, do you?”

Again this seemed like a goofy question but I laughed because I had a good idea of how it would go. And this time they actually hadn’t blocked the driveway. The only trouble we’d have getting out, if we needed to, would be navigating around all the trucks in the street. He added that they’d be out of the way in less than an hour, then asked if I thought they were doing a nice job.

They were. The new concrete walls on either side of the driveway look very nice. Joke all you want about government work. Sometimes they get things done.