Days Of Independence
The eminent professor doctor came down from the city and tried to spot some interesting birds out here during the week of July 4th but excepting the Indigo Bunting pair did not see as many interesting birds as he may have had we taken him off property into the Shenandoah wilderness. Bernadette on at least three occasions suggested to the group, hey let's take a hike, but the group evidently thought that she had said let's stick blunt rusty nails in our feet and walk to the Department of Motor Vehicles to have our license photos redone. After a few days he'd drank all he could drink, I mean done all he could do out here and hopped into the first BMW heading north. A day or two later wandering aimlessly around the estuaries near Coney Island he spotted a Heron from Africa that may have been spotted by others in the few days preceding but he was the first to get a photo. This bird has perhaps been seen on the east coast in the last few years but never before officially reported in the state of New York. So this is a pretty damn big deal and so to speak a fine feather in the cap of the eminent professor doctor.
As much as I need my license photo redone I did not feel like hiking the first time Bernadette suggested it after the exodus of the entire group. And she did not feel like it when I suggested it later. Finally on her last day here we went for a hike out near Old Rag. We followed the Hughes River. It was very low. But it still made noise and when we could not see it we could hear it. Along the trail it was buggy. We did not bring repellant. The gnats, oh the damn gnats. I took one in the eyeball right off. The gnats were like gnats hovering near a hiker's face. Those gnats, what a nuisance. We saw no other humans. Which is to say we could have worn pith helmets with netting and not been laughed at. But we don't have those. The tiny gnat floats on the air near your eyeballs and darts to and fro but no one is sure why except gnatologists and other people who study gnats as a hobby. We tried unsuccessfully to be like an Alaskan nature guide/pilot we had seen ignoring gnats hovering by the hundreds around his face in a movie about a man who loved bears too much and was finally eaten by one. The pilot liked the bear lover but other people did not and said as much in the movie about the bear lover's life done by a premier foreign filmmaker.
Bernadette stopped on the trail and with her index finger pulled her lower lid way down and asked me, is there a gnat in my eye? There was not. But, as I told her, there was one trying to get in there while she ask me was there one already in there. Later she paused and shook her head and said, I just got one up the nose. I felt sorry for her but did not let on. She is not one to be daunted by nose gnats and does not need me feeling sorry for her. You may be saying, with that nose of yours how did you not get one up the nose? Just lucky I guess. I got bossy with her on the drive in and said spit out that gum and drink this Gatorade. She didn't really want to but she did it anyway. I was driving and silently gloating a little, saying to myself, ha, made you drink that Gatorade.
Later, after we shattered our record for that trail and had endured 7 or 8 miles of gnats we drove for food and had an organic beef burrito and a grilled salmon wrap at a local organic grocers. Bernadette tried to make me buy vegetables for myself for after she was gone but I fought her on it. Just before I relented she threw a bag of something green on the counter and rattled off simple directions that included salt and olive oil, a complete moron could manage it her tone was telling me and I fell for it.
The train out of Culpeper was 4 hours late but we had checked ahead and shaved off three of those hours lollygagging around Mt. Pleasant. We sat in the Jeep and listened to music and some comedians who were not extremely funny. I was pretending to be bored because I did not know what else to do. Bernadette said I could leave her there but I in not so many words told her that was the dumbest idea she had come up with since her idea to stick blunt rusty nails in our feet and walk to the DMV. There were two freight train false alarms and then the real deal and she got on the 50 out of here. I came back to Mt. Pleasant and took some photos of the sky.
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