Relative Something

A search of the area behind the cabin where Cyndie had previously seen the fawn turned up no signs of it. It may have lain down in a tiny curled ball, but since we didn’t see or hear from it the entire rest of the day, we prefer to imagine its mother returned and they wandered off to live happily ever after. The walk through the woods turned up some rewarding scenery in consolation.

The trillium is putting on a pretty good show for us. My second favorite adornment of the forests up here is the ferns. They are coming on strong this weekend.

The surprise we least expected to find was methodically pecking away on the shady side of a tree. It took some hunting to find it by honing in on the most likely direction the sounds were coming from and then staring long enough to catch a glimpse of the movement.

That’s a Pileated Woodpecker way up in the tree. They are the largest woodpeckers we have in North America, but they are a somewhat rare sighting. That makes it doubly special whenever we have one pay a visit.

I was able to take advantage of good weather yesterday afternoon and get out for a 39-mile loop riding my bike. My derailleur recalibration worked well, and I pushed my mileage to more than double my previous rides this season. My new gravel tires worked well, too, allowing me to confidently ride a road I didn’t know would be gravel. That portion offered me the chance to witness the smallest fawn I have ever seen in person. Compared to the one that was bleating outside our sunroom, this one was practically a quarter of the size.

It looked like it could have been born only a few hours earlier. I came up over a rise in the road and found the mamma and baby staring directly at me from the middle of the gravel road. As I approached them, I spoke a few words, which triggered the doe to leap off into the sparse growth beside the road. The matchstick-like legs of the fawn wobbled their way to follow the mom.

Steve arrived yesterday with guests who are friends from Sweden. We enjoyed a big feast for a late dinner after offering tours of the house and surroundings, and visiting with several neighbors for happy hour on the deck next to our place. I was feeling pretty self-satisfied about the distance I had traveled on my bike ride earlier in the afternoon, but my pride was taken down a notch when I learned a couple next door biked 55 miles, 20 or 25 of which were unplanned. They missed a turn and rode much farther south than they had intended.

My leg muscles were on the verge of cramping after my effort. I don’t want to think about the pain of riding that many unplanned miles.

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