Day Eighteen: Up Watatic and Down Again

Annie is the queen of blueberry picking, and she will have a palmful of the little guys before you can crack your knees.

There were a plethora of the bushes near the peak of Mt. Watatic. (We had a bit of disagreement about some bushes where the berries were more black, but I ate a few and did not die, so Annie is convinced that they were blueberries after all. I think.)

Annie picked more than a pie's worth of the berries for Buckaroo who was very thankful and squeally.

I know I mentioned this last time, but Annie does have a keen eye for a bird. She's very modest about it, too. First, she hears the bird call when I hear only the sound of my own voice in my head-- My friend Kate says that I have mom's ears and only hear a child crying in pain. It's survival instinct. Then, Annie can spot the chirper in a faraway tree and name it. Today she spotted the Gray Jay, and I thought all jays were blue.

We both wondered aloud about the different greenery along the hike, but Annie was able to tell me-- because another New England friend told her-- that the white alien sprouts in my flower bed are Indian Pipe. I Googled them and learned that they have no chlorophyll. Isn't that like not having a belly button? See? They're from Mars.

We calculated that we hiked about three miles round trip after adding in the little jaunt we took in the wrong direction. It sure did feel like ten, though. Maybe that's because I had the 25 pound Buckaroo on my back.

We did get quite turned around and were slightly startled to see that we'd ended up where we began. Plus, if we hadn't taken the detour we would have never seen the psychedelic purple mushrooms. Seriously!

Later, Annie treated Buckaroo and me to Thai food in Lunenberg. It was darned good Thai food, except that they only gave us about 1/4 cup of rice with our meal, and Buckaroo ate most of it. We conjectured that maybe they were low on rice tonight. We sat on the porch, and Buckaroo was mesmerized by the passing cars and bean sprouts.

Hanging around Annie makes a gal want to expand her usual repertoire of words. I often find myself asking her, "What does that word mean?" and Annie will say something like, "Oh, you know: large bird."

Tomorrow my California poet-friend is headed to another New England destination before she returns to the land of fires.

Ah, crud. It's almost midnight. I'm going to turn into a blueberry.