It happened around
12:40 p.m. (Nov. 29).
I was hoping to
get out for a long run, say, an hour. But time got away from me. You see, I’m
paper-chasing the documents, photos and legal signer I need in order to renew
my Canadian passport, something I’ve been meaning to do for months.
(Well, since a
year ago November, when a certain someone was elected president of the United
States.) I renew my
passport, and, well, that gives our family escape “claws.”
Busy work like
that always takes longer than you think it will – AND I took it upon myself to
try to improve our home music situation, which is a jury-rigged array of
playing devices that root in a “system” I bought in the mid-1980s while I was
employed as the assistant night news editor of the Windsor Star.
I had a sudden
hankering to hear tunes from Sean McConnell’s “Sean McConnell,” especially “Queen
of St. Mary’s” and “Beautiful Rose.”
All of which
reduced that long run to a half-hour scamper up and into the park: 12:30 p.m.
to 1 p.m.
It takes me 10
minutes running to a park access route near what is known as the Litchfield
Villa. Up I went on the path, leaves falling in front of me on this mild day of
intermittent breezes. Hands out as I run along, off-road trailing in the way I
like to do it, and then, just as I veered south, a darting leaf appeared to my
right, just above my head, and with a swipe I managed to snatch it by its “lower
body.”
It didn’t hit the
ground before I grabbed it – my first caught leaf while running in I don’t know
how long.
It was a red oak
leaf. From the same type of tree as the magnificent one that for 25 years was a
glory to behold in our backyard before advanced disease forced us to cut it
down earlier this year.
