6/28- In The Field

I drove Shelly into work again early Sunday morning, but not to use the car this time. Instead, it was to save time once she got out of work so that I could pick her up at noon to get to Hillsdale for an important rendezvous. Todd would be meeting his Dad for the second time in his life.

I spent the morning editing pictures and playing with Timber until it was time to go. Grabbing Shelly in Wauseon we drove an hour north back to Hillsdale to meet up with Todd again. I think she was fairly nervous as well, and I was a bit tired, so there was little said on the ride.

Todd was waiting, dressed up as much as one can get dressed up from backpack attire, hanging out at the gas station across from his Mom's place. The deal was that he and Shelly were going to Marshall to meet him and I would hang out for the afternoon at the gravel pit so they could have the privacy of family for the occasion. I was more than happy to oblige this arrangement both for them and for me.

So that was how it played out that I landed myself in a cornfield, on my own, in the middle of Michigan for about seven hours on a beautiful summer afternoon. As soon as they dropped me off I tromped into the pit, dropped my pack fetching my untested sling shot in the process and took to target practice for an hour. Following that I wandered up to the ruins of his old house that he'd grown up in to take some pictures. I felt a bit like a kid again running around in the dingle with nothing to do but explore.

After mucking about around the house a while I returned to the pit to fetch my items. Doing a tour of the grounds I found a perfect little nook by the rim of the pit, under a tree by the corn, to recline for the rest of the day.

I was getting a bit hungry, having had nothing but coffee once again, so I broke out the stove to cook and lighten my load in one action. I read, took more photos in the corn fields, wrote letter, and ate up there for the rest of the day. It was heaven. A slice of it at least. A tiny taste of where I wanted to be more permanently, and was getting anxious to get there.

While fooling with my camera in the corn there did come about some bad news. I attempted to use the old school timer on my Nashika and ended up busting the damn thing completely. Luckily I had finished up the roll that was in there just before hand, but the clicker to snap the pictures no longer does anything.

Eight O'clock rolled around and so returned Todd and Shelly. There had been some mix up as to when lunch was supposed to be, but in the end the whole meet went quite well. Shelly returned us to Hillsdale once more and there we said our final goodbyes.

We were staying at Bob's once again. Todd had been for the past week while I was in Ohio, but now was the time to figure out our exit from the area on a whole. The odd part was, the two of us sitting around the fire pit, Bob off at work for the night, both of us felt it wasn't yet time to go. This Wednesday thing was still nagging at me and it apparently was nagging at Todd too.

Neither one of us could explain it at all. We took stabs, guesses, looked into meanings and feelings on it, but all we could get was that leaving before then seemed premature even though we both were now ready to go. The only things we could draw from our analysis was that it definitely seemed like a continued lesson in sitting and shutting up, and that we thought what ever it was would show itself Wednesday probably late afternoon. Honest to God, we could pin a time frame around it now. I thought it'd be how we'd leave the area too, but I'd turn out only to be half right on that.