I'm sure it will take a long, long time for us to resign ourselves to the absence of that beautiful old pine we've seen every day for the last 32 years, standing as a silent sentry and guidepost at the bottom of the long hill we descend to enter the forested ravine across from our street in Orleans. The landscape looks bereft, and so it should, with that grand old feature now gone. We have really conflicted feelings over its absence; first the fact that it had been leaning and of late seemed so threatening as that lean became more and more pronounced.

 

 

So there's relief that the suspense over when it might fall and whether someone might be on the trail at the time of its collapse and a catastrophe greater than the absence of a noble old tree might occur. Yet even while there's a sense of palpable relief not to be haunted by the prospect of an imagined but very real potential for danger every time we and others descended or ascended that hill in the knowledge that if and when that tree collapsed its height would challenge almost the entire length of the hillside trail. 

 

Now that it's gone, its absence makes a profound statement, of the impermanence of any landscape. The finite nature of existence. The realization that it takes but an instant for things to occur and suddenly what we take for granted has been altered. When we walk downhill toward the interconnecting trails through the trail system enabling us to visit the various portions of the forest we've become so familiar with over the years, we can't help but assume it will always be there, and we will always be there to appreciate it.

 

The tree's collapse, the forest's adjustment to the various fairly violent weather systems that have deprived it of many of its trees show just who is in charge here; time and the elements that nature unleashes and we but awed spectators. Because of the time of year, when the landscape looks tired, dreary, devoid of colour with spring just settling in, we see a forest not in its best shape. But walk on a little further and there are other old trees, maples, oaks, beech, hemlock, poplars, pines, firs, spruce, that remain in good health populating the forest.

 

Not to mention the burgeoning emergence of spring flowers that will each in their turn delight us with their presence, ephemeral and beautiful. Soon we'll be seeing mayflies, beetles, dragonflies, butterflies as the weather warms. Today, despite the darkly overcast skies, robins sang triumphantly in appreciation of the rain that has brought earthworms to the surface to serve as delicacies for these wonderful birds. And today I saw bees in the garden for the first time this spring.

 

Thankful it was no longer raining, despite the bruised clouds above and the chill in the air, we decided to take a long circuit in appreciation of life and its opportunities to make the most of every minute of it. Jackie and Jillie were as delighted as always to saunter about here and there, travelling double the distance we do, walking as it were a straight line, whereas they course back and forth, over to the right, then the left, romping ahead and doing turns off-trail.

 

We would be leaving them at home alone again later in the afternoon, and we wanted to make certain they had the opportunity to be out for as long as possible, and ourselves as well. Today would be my final visit to the Eye Clinic for a doctor to check out the progress of the eye a cataract was removed from and a new lens installed.

The drive downtown was a lesson in impatient patience. For some odd reason, at half-past two in the afternoon, lanes in either direction were clogged with slow-moving traffic. We crawled rather than drove to the downtown area where the clinic is located. A drive that should take between 20 minutes and a half-hour set us back a full hour.

Once at the clinic it wasn't long to wait before I was seen and my eye examined. A few tests of the eye reading from a few charts, the usual exposure to high-tech equipment scrutinizing the inner area of the eye, a brief consultation and I was given a green light of coming along nicely, the eye healing as it should, and informed that over the next month I would see even greater improvement than I have to date which is considerable.