For Bonita

I had Bonita of Flitzy Phoebie in mind when I took these photos. She is forever sharing pictures and narratives of her many wilderness adventures with us. For you, I looked, Bonita.

We're having a bit of an up and down week. Monday was gorgeous; we ran into some potential trouble on Tuesday; and, Wednesday's weather was just about as fantastic as Monday's. What better thing to do than go walk about in nature? There's a conservation are about a half hour from here called Mill of Kintail. I've mentioned it before.

When we first found it late last Spring, we meant to get back there and walk the trails. We did get back there with company but never walked the trails. The desire to do something positive with yesterday's weather brought it back to mind so, out we headed.

The first thing that visitors see once they get through the gates and park is The Cloister. That's it in the first picture, above. It's a little open-air chapel where they have weddings in the summer. People would sit facing the cloister, and the ceremony would most take place just under the shade of the roof. Acquaintances of ours had their ceremony there on a very blustery and rainy late spring day. That's the problem with outdoor weddings, eh? You never can be certain.

Behind and down the hill from The Cloister is the old house, now a museum of sorts. Despite its name, there is no longer a mill at Kintail, but this fine house still stands. Off to the left (above), you can see a glimmer of water from Indian River, and that's about where the mill used to stand as I understand it. Below, is a photo of the river along the back of the house. There is a little covered lookout from where I took the photo. I thought it would be arty to get the roof of the lookout in the frame, but I was wrong!

But we'd seen all of that before; this time we walked one of the trails. It was less than two miles long, but we sauntered along and took the best part of an hour to finish our stroll. Most of the woods were somewhat scrubby, for as the photo below of Cuppa strolling shows, the forest plainly needs more time to grow from whenever it was cut down. Nevertheless, we had solitude; after meeting a couple at the beginning of our walk, we didn't encounter anyone else for the rest of the hour.

As we neared the end of our walk, the woods cleared onto a farmer's field. You can see barns and horses, below. And if you haven't been there yet, there are more photos and commentary on Cuppa's blog.