I had all of those as well as fear of the unknown.
Daniel and I met in the check-out line at Walmart. We talked about the slowness of the checkers, the miserably hot weather, and what music we’d listened to recently. By the time it neared our turn to check out, we had introduced ourselves and Daniel had asked me if I’d like to spend a day with him.
When I said, “A day?” he grinned and said there was some driving required to get where he’d like to go. Since we are at least eighty miles from anything that resembles a city, I told him okay.
Today was the day. Daniel called yesterday and told me to wear “outdoorsy” clothes. There are several state and national parks within a hundred miles, so I didn’t think anything about that.
Our destination, however, was a surprise. Daniel picked me up around nine this morning. He was driving a seventies-something truck-type Bronco, well worn, and I wondered if it was his usual ride or a test of my personality. We rode about thirty miles on back roads, some two lanes only if the two vehicles meeting were small. Daniel had to get into the edge of ditches a couple of times when we met full-size trucks.
Near the foot of a long, winding hill, Daniel pulled into a driveway with a gate across it.
“Isn’t this private property?” I asked
“It is,” he replied, “but I know the owners. I hunt here sometimes.”
Once through the gate, Daniel drove on a graveled driveway that curved around the hillside. A hayfield was to the left and trees on the right shaded the driveway. At the end of the looping driveway was a log cabin.
“This is pretty,” I said.
“The original cabin is over two hundred years old,” he told me. “The owners left it as original as possible.”
He parked close to the trees on the hillside and we got out. Daniel got a backpack and two walking sticks out of the Bronco’s bed, and said, “Let’s go.”
I took the walking stick he handed to me and we walked along the driveway to the creek. The weather had been dry the past few weeks so the creek barely had two inches of water running in it. I was glad I had worn my water-resistant hiking boots.
“Let’s follow the creek,” Daniel said, and we walked upstream for an hour or longer, making note of the wildlife and wildflowers along the way. There were a few deep pools with minnows enjoying the coolness under overhanging branches.
We came to a bend in the creek that had a gravel bar shaded by a huge sycamore. “Lunch time,” Daniel announced. “I hope you like peanut butter sandwiches.”
I’m not a fan of peanut butter sandwiches, but I told Daniel that would be fine. He unfastened the backpack and removed our lunch – peanut butter sandwiches, apples, chocolate chip cookies and Pepsi.
We sat on one of the sycamore’s exposed roots while we ate, talking about the clear water running past us and the cool breeze coming down the hollar the creek was running through. The pleasant gurgling of the water as it traveled over the nearly flat slate rock layers was a musical backdrop to the birdsong in the trees.
I always enjoyed wading in a creek so when we finished our lunch, I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pant legs, and gingerly walked across the gravel bar to the running water. Daniel soon joined me and we waded upstream to a slightly deeper spot in the creek.
I stopped to watch minnows swim around my feet. They would sometimes nibble at my toes, which made me giggle. When I started to walk farther upstream, my bare feet slipped on the rocks. Just before I hit the water, Daniel grabbed my arm. He pulled me to him and said, “Man, that was close.”
Yeah, I thought . . . close. Close enough I could feel the beat of his heart through his sweat-dampened T-shirt. I pulled away and thanked him for his rescue.
“No problem,” he said while gazing steadily at me. “Do you want to walk farther up the creek?”
“Sure,” I replied. We returned to the gravel bar to put on our socks and shoes.
The sun was just dipping below the treetops when we returned to the Bronco. Even though I was tired from the amount of walking we had done, I had enjoyed the peaceful afternoon. Daniel and I had discussed many topics in our rambling conversation, from nature to space exploration to religion to education, and discovered we thought alike on most of the topics we discussed; our differences were slight on the ones we didn’t agree on fully.
We put the walking sticks and backpack in the Bronco’s bed and got in. Daniel started the engine then drove back toward the gate. At the end of the driveway, after closing the gate, he turned downhill. We crossed a creek that he said was a different creek than the one we had walked along most of the day. Up another hill, around more curves and along more narrow roads, we eventually came to the wider road leading back to town.
At my house, Daniel walked me to the door and told me he had had a wonderful day. I told him I had also and asked if he would like to come in for a cold drink. He said he needed to get home – wherever that was; for some reason I had not asked – and that he’d call me, then he leaned in and gave me a short, sweet kiss.
I waited until he was out of sight before I put my fingers to my lips, savoring the sweet kiss at the end of the day, sweeter than the tiramisu I had chilling in the refrigerator. I hoped for more days of wading creeks and sweet endings to the days.
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