Otters @ MindSay

Is this the cutest thing you've ever seen ... or what?  (Watch to the end!)

 

:) ~ B

Okay, now I'm both amused and annoyed.

Went out hiking today with the boyfriend. About five miles from my house, there's a region referred to as "Oxbow", presumably named for the shape that the river makes through there. There's loosely-kept up trails, a few areas that constitute a campground, nice picnic areas, kind of neat jungle gyms on the civilized side of the river, and a zoo of animals native to the area (and by area I mean state) that have been injured and can't be released to the wild. I like the otters.

Side note - I love otters. Happy, carefree, always have to be in the water, all water must be set in motion, tend to not care what they knock over in their play. They don't really run, either - they kind of romp. My cats do something similar, but they do it a lot faster, which is funny, because their back picks up more momentum than their front, and you always expect to see it catch up and pass them, making them tumble. They're soft, bright eyed, white sharp teeth, cute, pretty, don't care, and they bite when you poke them. :) I love otters.

I'm annoyed at the blog theme. I was checking out some of the newer themes, still haven't found anything that really suits me, but I was close on the old one, once I messed with all the colors. I'm thinking I'll have to do some of my own picture work to find something that works for me - anything that suits the general masses I tend to shy away from. Maybe fire, or giraffes. No, wait - sax with firelight playing over it. There we go.

'Course, I won't be able to do that until at least December - we don't use the fireplace in the family room over the six months of the year that it isn't snowing.

Anyway, back to the Oxbow thing. The main places for all the trail beginnings are, predictably enough, First Bridge, Second Bridge, and Third Bridge. There's a few looping off from the zoo, too. I've been going there with my dad and sisters since we moved here (cross-country skiing on the Zumbro, too - great fun), and I still don't know the trails all that well. Brian and I've been exploring them to see what all is there - so far my favorite surprise was this pretty little meadow, heavily infested with wild parsnip (the heathen devil plant - hissss!), but there are also lilies that are close to tiger lilies.

I love tiger lilies. They're the only flower in the world with freckles. :D We have some growing along the edge of our deck. They seem to have this personality and spirit that doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks - they're going to have fun being themselves. And they're really pretty! They don't try, and they're pretty! Irises try, and they're gorgeous, but tiger lilies are just going to be themselves, and they're pretty by accident!

I've been thinking for awhile about getting a tattoo on my left shoulderblade - tiger lily through a treble clef. I said I'd think about it for at least two years, though. If I'm going to carry it for the rest of my life, I can wait to see if it's what I want.

I think we started at Third Bridge today. The trail here goes for about a half mile before coming to a three-way split. One of them goes up to North Meadow - I haven't been up there yet this year, and was meaning to check it out. For whatever reason, I took off down one that seemed unfamiliar, and Brian followed. Turns out we've been down it before, but Oxbow in fall is something different to explore than Oxbow in early summer.

This is winding back into mostly untamed woods, up and over the hills around the Zumbro. There are places where a bridge has been made over a floodrun or stream, and occasionally there'll be wood piled on the side of the trail. And if you strike the right trail, someone actually has placed stairs for the kids on some of the hills - but these seem like less a concession to civilization and more a happy discovery. They're cool. Don't ask me why. The rest of it is over and around and up and down. I like to run, Brian doesn't - so I run all the downhills, and if he's keeping up with me, carry on until the next uphill. Sometimes I catch myself around the bole of a tree to swing around a curve - I love running in the woods. He laughs at me.

Every trail I've ever been on will have these little side excursions to steep declines. These are maintained by young mental patients who've gotten loose from the ward. Bikes are no longer allowed on the Oxbow trails - I believe this is because it's too much hassle to haul them out of the river. Some side excursions continue where the ground doesn't. But they're almost always clear paths to the river, and I love being near or in water.

I swear, I get like a puppy at Oxbow. Brian's the wearied, amused person who brought me to the park, and I'm always dashing off to see what running down this hill is like, stopping suddenly to deeply investigate something meaningless, shrugging, and dashing off again to peer down a precipice, glance back at him with my tail wagging, eyes all excited. "Can we do it? Huh? Huh? Can we go down? Come on, we can make that! Let's go!"

You know you've picked a good hill when it takes longer to get down it than to get up. It probably took us a little under fifteen minutes to get down that hill, because I'd chosen the side that was closest to vertical, because I am an idiotic, excited retriever. There was some nice natural-ladder work with the roots that helped immeasurably, but I still ended up surfing about a third of the way down. Fortunately, it was the last third. Brian was coming behind me, and slid far more stuff down than he slid himself. I actually prefer being the person in front in this case, because I can deal with stuff coming from behind, but I prefer to not have to worry about hitting anyone with the stuff I'm knocking down.

I wanted to go play in the water, but October river water is chilly at best, and the bottom was big-rocks, not gravel. Big sharp rocks, actually. Not particularly nice when half of them are slippery.

But it seemed a particularly fitting place to be having the discussion. I've been moving on, found a new pace, and everything in my life that isn't moving seems to be growing kind of...stagnant. It's putting some distance between Brian and myself, although my best friend attributed this to my history of commitment-phobia.

Yes, I'm a commitment-phobe who dates in terms of long-term relationships. It's a little wacky to deal with. Then again, what fun is love without the wacky?

So, we came to no positive conclusion, save that neither of us is willing to be a part of a relationship that is nothing more than 'friends with benefits'. I actually hate that term. It seems devoid of honor, somehow. You're sharing your body with someone that you can't share your heart with? It's great for the fun and fluffy side of life, but relationships have to something greater, at least for me. We talked for a long time, just watching the water, holding each other. The benefit to him being exaggeratedly tall is that my head fits into the hollow of his shoulder whenever I need a hug or a snuggle.

He had work tonight, so we cut short any other painful and confusing revelations, assuming that it would take us another fifteen minutes to get up the hill. It actually took between five and seven - Manders chose a route that was definitely more difficult and less impossible. There was part of it that was just rock climbing, and Brian was ahead of me. One of his footholds gave from under him, and I dodged off to the side to avoid the ten-pound rock coming down at me. He scrambled up quickly, and I'm pretty sure he didn't realize I'd been directly behind him.

Walking back was interesting - less running, because the pansy was all tired from the climb, but he was lost in thought, and I can't stay serious. I have to make people smile. I'm getting better - I can actually manage to keep the silly comments to a minimum in an important conversation, but as soon as it's over, all my pent-up silliness wants out. So, I'm kiting and skipping and shuffling down the trail, and I got him to laugh at me again. So the world was partly okay, for just a moment.