Early one recent morning faithful companion Rosie and I were making our way around Smith Island. Well, it used to be an island, but now is sort of attached to Lock and Dam 14 on the Mississippi between Pleasant Valley, Iowa and Hampton, Illinois. I’ve walked that loop hundreds of times by now most often with wife Sally, Rosie, and her predecessors . On mornings when it is my turn to exercise her and I take her there I am usually the only human. Thus, my mind switches between external observation and internal cogitation. Rosie usually doesn’t stray far and does like to be entertained. Sticks. You could waterski behind her.
Some mornings though Rosie does mind her own business for a while my mind spits up stuff I wished it hadn’t. Things I’ve said or done that had been hurtful to people in my life. Events that have gone without consequence. Consequence would have been penance. The sorts of things for which apology would be too late and/or gratuitous. All I can usually do in such circumstance is count the hours between the brain fart and a good guzzle of Chardonnay.
This morning the sun was just about to greet us, so that “aide memoire” was a long way off. I was dealing with a particularly unpleasant mortification. It was twenty years old. Jeesh.
Suddenly, Rosie’s nose turned up and she quickly darted off the path Very Unusual. I followed her deep into the woods. She led me to the tree you see pictured below. Inserted behind a sheaf of bark at exactly my eye level was a laminated bible verse.
Isaiah 43:18-19. Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
Whoa. In other words, don’t look back. Look ahead. It’s clearing up!
I shit you not.
How did that get there and why was Rosie drawn to it? What does she know that I don’t
