Here lie the dearest of friends. We buried our dear BB along with the ashes of his brother, Echo, on Monday, by the garden gate, a place they often sat, waiting for us to return when we went away. The dearest of friends I have ever known. For ten years they graced our lives. No friends brought more happiness than these two.

Echo passed away last May, and on Monday, BB went to sleep for the very last time. We were fortunate to have these two share their joy with us since March of 2006. May you have friends who bring you such joy.

Bicycling home from the Bow Post Office this morning, I came across this mysterious sight on the climb up Bow Hill. A rock, a pair of boots, and a half-drunk latte. The boots and latte cup were laid too neatly to have tumbled out of a passing car. Maybe the shoes are those of someone who rose into the heavens when the rapture happened during the night. Out of everyone one earth, only one was raptured, which is why the only person who noticed it had happened is me, who came across the evidence while pedaling up Bow Hill Road. Though, if the shoes are of someone who was raptured, where are their clothes? Maybe their soul was so pure, they sensed the momentous occasion was at hand, and set out before the crack of dawn, wearing only their shoes, knowing they wouldn’t need clothes any more.

But the rock? What to make of it? It’s a mystery. Probably a puzzle I will take to my grave. I moved the boots, rock, and latte cup further away from the road.

Further up the road, more evidence that something momentous has happened. A hieroglyph of a fish god on the road. It’s actually a mark pointing to where the Olympic Pipeline, an oil line, is buried underneath the road. But it does look like an Aborigine from ten thousand years ago time traveled to Bow Hill during the night and painted a hieroglyph on the road.

A fortuitous combination of country road crews and rain has created a slender garden of cascading mountain streams along Bow Hill Road. Take a few steps away from busy Bow Hill Road and you enter the calming world of a mountain stream, cascading over the rocks.

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It’s a world almost no one sees though thousands go by every day. While I was filming the cascading waters, cars drove by every five to ten seconds. At a car every ten seconds, that’s 360 cars a day. In ten hours that’s some 3,600 cars and how many thousands of people? Do any realize how beautiful it is in the ditch?

In the future, when cars drive themselves, you’ll have time to enjoy the beauty in the ditches. You’ll be able to get out of your car, and send it on it’s way to pick up your shopping and do your errands, while you dip your toes in the cold cascading waters of the ditch. Your car will come back in an hour with your shopping, and take you home, refreshed from listening to the sounds of spring.

Every cascade makes it’s own sound. The size and shape of the rocks, the width of the stream, the slope of the rock, the flow of the water, all make the water sing a different pitch and volume. The water sings its way down to the valley. When the road engineers and crew were designing and building the ditch, I don’t think they were planning on making a water instrument miles long, but that’s what they accomplished. Often the most wondrous things people make are things they never intended to create.

After a snowless winter, falling cherry blossoms on the pond are the most snow the pond will see. It’s been a few years since the pond has frozen over, let alone be covered by a blanket of deep snow. Does the pond miss feeling the hard ice, the quiet a heavy snow brings? Are cherry blossoms enough to make the pond happy, or do they make it weep for a thick layer of ice topped with a blanket of snow?

All it takes to transform the place to a hideaway high in the mountains is for the fog to roll in.

BB enjoys a walk as the fog starts to lift. In the afternoon, with the sun out, and the fog but a memory, the chickens are out foraging under the blooming cherries. It takes wide open spaces for chickens to be happy and lay the best eggs.