"The Road Closed Opens a New World" (June 2007)

I took my month-old daughter for a walk the other day, sound asleep in her carrier, head buried in my chest. I listened to all the birds and sounds of life in the country as we walked, and I reckon she listened to my heartbeat.

Our road is closed for nine months while they rehabilitate an old stone bridge, so the normally busy commuter times are quiet now, good for walking. It is far from a "dead end" however. You notice amazing details when you walk a road you always drive. It becomes a window into an entirely different world - the tiny toy house tucked way away in the woods, a complete paradox with its ornate driveway entrance, or the view from a neighbor's farm visible only down the length and width of their driveway.

I told Madeleine that we were going to visit the beavers down at the creek, to see what the real engineers were up to. The likelihood of seeing them, of course, is small, especially when they are bombarded with construction noise from the bridge all day long. It sounded good though.

On this weekend morning, we arrived at the bridge, I walked down to the water, and looked in the stillness at the reflections of the old sycamores in the water, perfectly mirrored in the early light. And within a few seconds, several dozen yards downstream, the water was moving slowly in a barely perceptible V-shape. I watched the animal swimming closer, thinking perhaps it was a muskrat due to its small size. It came almost to where we stood, turned to the opposite bank, and disappeared into the dark beneath some overhanging tree routes.

It was a baby beaver, following its own rituals and instincts of exploring the world around it, and its home in the riverbank perfectly hidden in plain sight. All the years I've driven over that bridge, I only have time to notice the water level and maybe spot a heron. It's amazing to notice the details of a very busy world all around.

I've grown quite grateful for the gift of a closed road, a slower pace, a tiny new way of looking at the world around me. Her little fingers curl around mine, her blue eyes look at me intently, studying me, darting back and forth. I realize that I took my first lessons in learning to look at my world in much the same way. It is the next phase in the spring of life, when the new learn the ways of their elders, learn the way of their peers, and finally, learn to find their own way, blessed and cursed with the knowledge and instincts to find their own home in the riverbank.

Let the summer begin, and a happy summer solstice to you and yours. Here's hoping that some of these simplest of pleasures find their way to you and yours during these longest of days. And I wonder what wonders tomorrow morning's walk will bring us.