April 23, 2024
Turtles and Pink Slippers
The morning was reminiscent of our first year here in Sims, North Carolina. After drinking our cups of coffee while chatting on the couch, we put on some warm clothes and walked to the main road. Our house was in the middle of a two-mile road, which had stop signs on both ends. There was little traffic, and the street was flat in some areas with a large hill in the middle. The creek, which ran through our property sat at the bottom of the hill. During our first year here, we walked this road daily.
The morning walk was beautiful. While we weren’t out on Lake Wilson, the small rural town was still scenic, with its few homes and large tracts of land. Songbirds sang and flew about. The crisp air made the grasses, covered in morning dew, steam as it interacted with the warm earth. The creek had a thin layer of fog floating just above its surface.
When we returned to the house, I sat down to write while sipping on a second cup of coffee. Then I took a shower and got ready for work. While today was Tuesday, it was my Friday since I would take off the rest of the week while my wife was off school for spring break. I got busy, trying to do as much work as possible, to ease my upcoming Monday morning workload, when I returned to work after being off. Daily, I probably wrote forty emails, received a hundred, and read through at least one hundred pages of reports. Sometimes, returning to work after a break felt like a punishment. But, hey, I never minded standing in the rain, as the old country song went.
During a short morning break, my wife and I ate a small piece of pie together. I went back to work while she disappeared into the woods. A few hours later, I took a quick break and walked into the woods while my coffee brewed. I found my wife sitting down on a trail, covered in sweat and bug spray. She had cleared the trail that lead from the back of our house to one of my tree stands. This connected to the trails we cleared last week. She even cleared a minor detour which lead to the stand’s ladder.
While starting a new trail, my wife found a hidden spot in the woods covered with wild orchids in full bloom. I looked them up, and they were called Pink Lady’s Slippers. They were exquisite and the small area seemed secretive, hiding a small patch of soft pink in a sea of drab colors. We talked for a few minutes and then I headed to an online meeting.
I closed my computer during my lunch break and went outside to sit down. My wife told me lunch was ready and that we would eat outside on the deck. I set the table, and she brought out two large salads with freshly grilled skirt steak. The Traeger was still smoking. Lunch was amazing, especially when sitting outdoors and hanging out with my best friend. It was the type of lunch break that made the work day easier.
After eating, I still had time to burn, so my wife took me down the trails to show me all the work she had done. Then we continued north until we came to the creek area. To our surprise, we saw a turtle sunning on a log. When it noticed us, it splashed down into the water and disappeared. Last year, we saw a small turtle on a trail, but this was the first turtle we saw at the creek.
The turtle on the trail had streaks of bright yellow in its shell, but today’s turtle was mostly a brownish-green. Its shell was slightly oval, but mostly round. We inspected the water, but saw nothing through the murk except for a trail of small air bubbles. Excited by our new find, my wife looked over the rest of the creek and spotted a huge turtle exiting the water and crawling through the mud.
This enormous turtle, slightly greener than the first, had a shell that almost looked rectangular, although the corners were certainly rounded. It stepped through the mud like a prehistoric dinosaur, almost robotic in its movement. In one moment, it hunkered down low against the brown mud, and in the next, it had vanished. While seeing the first turtle was exciting, this second turtle was so large that we talked about it for the rest of the day. This place never ceased to amaze us.
After the turtle dove under water, we turned to continue down the trail and a large hawk plummeted from the sky down to the area where we stood. It let out a loud cry that startled us. We laughed and kept moving, working our way around a large loop that eventually led us back home. My wife walked to the pasture and rested in the hammock, shaded by twelve pines. After a few hours, I went out to check on her, hoping she was napping. Unsurprisingly, she was sitting in the hammock, wide awake, studying. I really loved her discipline.
I closed my computer at 6:15 PM. The workday and week, was over. My wife was happy I was off and she promptly put me to work cutting wood for a fire. She had the Traeger fired up; dinner smelled great. I split wood, which allowed me to release physical tension by hitting something at full force without going to jail. All joking aside, cutting wood reminded me of kendo practice, taking me back to my time in Tokyo, roaming from dojo to dojo, learning lessons I still carried today.
I started a fire and my wife served up grilled fish and vegetables, which included grilled zucchini, Brussel sprouts, and broccoli. To my surprise, the broccoli was the tastiest of the greens, as its small florets seemed to soak up the marinade used to season them. The fish and vegetables paired nicely with a side of steamed white rice.
After dinner, we sat and relaxed by the fire, talking about the next few days we had off together. Then my wife went inside to bathe while I threw more wood on the fire and grabbed a cold beer from the fridge. It was nice to have a quiet evening. The thought of not working until Monday sounded good, even though my boss and team texted me throughout the evening about an issue they were trying to resolve. After my wife finished bathing, I went inside, did the dishes, took a shower, and went to bed. A small vacation would start tomorrow morning, and I was ready to embrace it.