First picnic

Yesterday evening we furtively packed up our picnic basket and headed down to the river, all the while feeling like we were getting away with something. Just as when we were kids, getting into mischief and knowing that at any minute some Adult would walk in and break up the fun, last night felt like a pleasure always on the verge of disruption. I suppose there are some more licentious parallels I could draw as well, but I'll leave those to you. Let's just say, there came a soft blue twilight at the end of March, and we savored every waking minute.


Nesting our root beers into the dried riverbank grasses, we sat and watched and listened. Of all the things to miss about living in a city, the curiosity and intrigue of just sitting and opening your senses in an open space is what I miss the most. You never know what you'll encounter: a rattling flock of mergansers, the limp, lucid hump of an otter calmly drifting past, the pungency of a trampled clump of pennyroyal. All around you, secrets are being kept. The wild things watch you, and withhold, and wonder.


So, we sat and appreciated. We ate leftover potato salad, and toasted baguette with pesto.

And, when the air grew chilly and the moist ground threatened to soak through our unrolled sleeping bag, we picked up and headed home again.