I am apparently a thermodynamic fanatic.
The switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius has never turned my crank. I still read, as I always have, the thermometer beside my door on the Fahrenheit side of the little red indicator.
Comparing one to the other has not been a phase that I participate in. Though I’m infringing on the expression of a much played country and western tune the fact remains: “When it’s hot it’s hot and when it’s not it’s not,” with the turning division point from one to the other at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. What more could one want?
A couple of days back, as the temperature struggled to reach the record breaking hot spot in the low 90s, my son stuck his head in the door, calling up to my room “Dad! Let’s go for a tour, I’ve just found a place that I know you’ll be interested in.”
Though I was just ready to lay down for my usual noon snooze, but also knowing that the pick-up truck had air conditioning, I grabbed a bottle of water and headed down the stairs and out the door as fast as I could shuffle.
It was not a long drive, perhaps 20 minutes, when we ended up on one of those updated winding roads, colloquial noted up here as a once-was goat trail. Towering tall cedars swayed firm and stalwart on each side of a noted government park. A narrow entrance directed us to a small shaded parking lot.
The first thing I saw was a well placed circle of selected round stones indicative of a camp fire pit. Beyond that I could see, well built from selected river-bed stone, a foot high, curved, miniature cofferdam. The pool of water it held behind was possibly 18 inches deep, with a sandy smooth stone spattered bottom. The water as it tumbled over this little man-made falls was next to ice cold and was, without doubt, music to all listening ears.
A well-worn foot pathway, obviously part of the Bruce Tail, led up a rather steep, root-spattered incline that allowed you to see, from a lookout point, the so-called Hogg Falls.
Cool water at least six inches deep, tumbling 20 or more feet from a rock shelf, left a spray that cooled the air by at least 10 to 15 degrees. It was a hot -day paradise.
It is picnic spots like this, with the child’s wading area, that every mother, with kids under eight years of age, should know about. They could spend hours of quality time there, out of doors in the freshest of air making memories that would last a lifetime.
No one was around, and I, being in my second childhood, felt no qualms in dabbling my feet in the cooling waters of the child’s wading area. It was an afternoon well spent.
But this leaves me now with a giant apology to Betty and Joe, longtime neighbours and lifetime friends, who lived next door to the farm where the Little Lady and I lived for greater than 10 years when first married.
Unfortunately they called at my home to see me at the exact time that I was dabbling my shoe-less bare tootsies in the cool tumbling waters of that fast running trout stream.
Such is life! Call me if you’re coming, I’ll be sure to be home.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105