iWalk.2020.03.01 Nutcrackers

The day started bright, but quickly dulled to a windless overcast. Rain was forecast for the afternoon, so I decided on a morning walk and a bicycling rest day. I stopped on my walk at a favorite viewpoint to gaze across to the Pine Valley Mountains while eating a nut. The row of pecan trees where I stopped have not yet been harvested. They were the first trees of that ilk that I knowingly encountered. I picked a nut off the ground and broke it open with the instep of one of my size-thirteen nutcrackers. The kernel was delicious.

I was chewing and musing: does drearing my weird on the same routes day after day make me a boring old fart or a discriminating connoisseur? I recalled Sir Walter Scott of Abbotsford, near Melrose in southern Scotland. He halted so often to view a favorite prospect of the Eildon Hills that it was named 'Scott's View' in his memory. It was said that his horse would stop at the spot without being commanded. Indeed, Scott's funeral cortège halted there on his final journey.

The skies brightened after lunch, contrary to expectations, so we went for a drive and some retail therapy. Your answer to my question, in the light of my anecdotes about Scott, my be colored by your enjoyment, or otherwise, of Scott's œuvre. Forgive us both; we are from the past.

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