It’s a beautiful day and about as midsummerish as it can get, so I hopped on the bicycle for a little tour down some country roads. I thought I’d pedal to the river, just beyond the neighbor’s farm.

I’m a retired miner, not a farmer, so I don’t even know what crop this is. Maybe canola? All I know is that these fields are much easier on the eyes now than when they were covered in snow drifts.

At the river, I took a little breather as I had pedaled about 5 miles, and I’m no spring chicken. It’s very beautiful there, and someone had carved out a nice little campsite in the trees.

There aren’t any farms by the woods, so I didn’t know if these guinea hens were wild, or if they just wandered a long way from home. It looks like God spent so much time on those star-spangled feathers, he just squeezed a head on them and left it at that.

As I was getting back on the bike to ride home, I almost stepped on what Emily Dickinson referred to as a “narrow fellow in the grass”. He put a little damper on my midsummer bike ride; I truly do not like snakes!

I stood there awhile, taking it all in: the smells, the sights, and sounds; it was paradise, for sure, but it brought to mind a quote by Iris Watts that summed up the moment:

“The trouble with paradise

Is that there’s always

A snake in the grass.”

–Photos by me