I still have wrapping to do, cooking and baking, too. Yesterday’s rainy walk was a calm oasis amidst the holiday to-dos.

At one point I found myself walking along a fencerow. To my right, a golf course. To my left, a tangle of trees and brush. It was only halfway down the path that I realized there was a fence on my left, as well.

So this was a double fencerow, the land between fences, uncultivated, unclaimed. Except … it has been put to the best of uses. It leads from the eddies and ripples of Little Difficult Run to the sleek office parks of Blake Lane and Waples Mill Road, and from there (I now know from experience) to lakes and dams and ridges.

It’s a trail, a passageway. It takes us from one place, one reality, to another. And it looks very inviting here, I think — in a Thomas Hardyesque way!