Post 41/2023. Taking advantage of this week’s balmy weather took us on various rambles. Elkhart County’s River Preserve and LaGrange County’s Pine Knob Park were two destinations for walks, as was our immediate Greencroft retirement community campus.

Fall colors have peaked and leaves are falling hereabouts.

Memory lives on

I was probably 6 or 7 years old when I first saw an unbelievably massive display of fall colors. My parents and some of us siblings were going to Little Current on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario where Dad planned to buy heifers to feed over winter.

Enroute from our southwestern Ontario home, we saw plenty of trees sporting fantastic colors. After four or five hours of driving, an even greater scene burst upon us. Cresting a hill, a blaze of color spread across the surrounding hills and valley below. I gasped. Breathtaking. A painted landscape. Magical. Magnificent. Awesome. Kaleidoscopic. Unforgettable.

We spent overnight with a family we knew. Next day at Little Current we siblings traipsed around the elevated walkways of the outdoor holding pens. Mom probably had packed our lunch. Dad bought cattle and arranged for transport with a local contact. We set off for a night stop with family friends in Orangeville, north of Toronto, arriving there very late, almost having to be carried to bed.

That trip, with its multi-hued canvas and seemingly endless pens of cattle and related misty memories, remains in my mind’s eye today. Special.

Colors came calling this week

Catch up

I’ve finished reading My Travels with Mrs. Kennedy (last week’s blog). Revelatory. Inclusive of President Kennedy but fully focused on Jackie. Touching throughout, smiles, laughs, tears, aha moments. A brief treatment of President Kennedy’s assassination and its aftermath. Author Clint Hill ends with “People often ask me, ‘What was Jackie Kennedy really like?’ Well, now you know.”

Savor the moment

Here’s to being a kid again.

-John