We don't stay long

It's been a rainy couple of weeks, but that hasn't stopped us from going outside now and then when there's a letup. Rainy days, even on end, are sort of my favorite.

There's a trail near our house we like to walk with the kid. It's usually uninhabited in this kind of weather. For all the same reasons that I imagine people avoid coming here--the planned wild spaces, the unpredictable maintenance of the footpaths, the low spaces that flood or stay filled with mud--we love it.

Sometimes turtles make their way to the edge of a field, or fire ant colonies emerge underfoot. If your timing is good and you're not too noisy, deer will make their way through narrow aisles that you can find easily enough if you know where to look. The rotting crabapple drops its fruit. You lose an ill-fitting shoe temporarily in the mud.

It's a mix of risk and reward, but there are jewels here. A reliable abandon--quiet.

Today the creek is swollen and we watch the kid more closely than usual since he can't swim yet and the water is deep and clouded with mud. He builds an imaginary sand castle, or so he tells us, but really he's just moving his hands around in the sand and chattering without much need for a response. My husband looks for things to throw into the current, and I try to photograph raindrops without losing my footing.

We don't stay long. Maybe an hour. It's cold, and even though our Northeasterrner's blood should tell us otherwise, we've gotten used to these mild Georgia winters. It's not all idyllic. It never is. The kid is getting hungry and whining about snacks we left in the car. He tries in earnest to take a path that goes in the opposite direction of the parking lot. But within five or ten minutes, we're back at the car and his muddy boots are thrown in the back. The rain is picking up again.

We get him settled and remove our hats. I can smell the winter air on his cheeks, his hair. He acts surprised, and adorably grateful when we hand him an apple and a bag of pretzels before turning onto the main road.

It's a small thing, these little walks. But it's become part of what it means when I think of this place as home now. The way the fields in this place change through the seasons, thick with weeds and wildflowers and swarms of insects in summer--carpenter bees, butterflies, cicadas. When the water is clear and calm and fish wait in the shallows for bits of crackers or bread.

We are passing time here. It's almost impossible to notice how much our son has grown up against this landscape. His legs are longer. His questions, more insistent. He leads more than he follows. He's learned to lean into the quiet. To notice small things. To wait for us. To walk more slowly instead of running ahead. And I hope that these days stay with him. That he remembers how to listen this way. Remembers how to stop and wait. To notice--the rain in his hair,  the mud on his hands--these little riches.