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Everything Waits for Those Who ComeFebruary 05, 2009 Running errands here, there, and everywhere, Trav and I stopped at the M.V. Land Bank's Mai Fane property. The last time we walked around the meadow, the footpaths were pretty icy and one glacial gully required particular care. Both the meadow and the woods behind it are hilly, so we didn't go far. (Keep in mind that on Martha's Vineyard "hilly" is relative: the island's maximum elevation is less than 350 feet, and the highest points are mostly up-island.) Today you didn't need crampons to climb the steep switchback wooded hill above the old farmhouse, and you could walk downhill without sliding on your butt. So Trav and I took a brisk walk around the meadow and into the woods. It had been years since I rambled these trails on foot. For nearly 10 years I lived just up State Road. That's where Rhodry grew up, so several days a week we walked here and on the other side of State Road, where paths lead to the Land Bank properties at Ripley's Field and Wompesket (a beautiful hilltop place but also a long-grass tick heaven so we mostly went there in the dead of winter). The through way, if you will, that linked these conservation lands was the old Red Coat Hill "road" -- a rough dirt barely road whose high banks on either side testify to the heavy use it's had over the years. In those days -- sheesh, "those days" were barely a decade ago -- the houses were few and modest, their weathered shingles blending in with the oaks and pines and birches. No longer, as I discovered on a horseback exploration about a year ago. The houses have multiplied, and some of them are pretty damn big, and you no longer feel as through you're passing through a place that can only be reached on foot or bike or horseback. But that's another story. In this story I was walking the trails behind the Mai Fane meadow on foot, not on horseback, and accompanied by Travvy, not Rhodry. The same Travvy who yesterday sorely tried my powers of persuasion before finally giving up Lorna Jean's stuffed teddy. So on the way back to the truck we found ourselves heading toward the dead end of a high, wide stone wall, and what should be sitting on a stone jutting out of the wall but a stuffed puppy, white with black ears, crusted with snow and frozen solid. I'm 100% sure that Travvy saw no relationship whatsoever between the teddy he'd grudgingly surrendered and the puppy that appeared at the end of a stone wall. Me, I think the universe was saying, "Good boy, Travvy!"
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