Equinox Now

Jasmine came over to model her new princess outfit

Equinox Now!

I finally got around to getting dressed and out the door a little after noon today. The sky was leaden and dark. But the day was WARM,comparatively speaking to what I have been enduring the last month the temperature must have been in the forties. It was Spring like outside my door. Oh the temperature was cool but I smelled wet forest or tees mixed with just the slightest wood smoke. I took a couple of deep breaths to make sure I was smelling right. I was instantly time warpped back to the Boise River pare-1966.

Th Boise River flows through the city of the same name. We lived in the south east region of that area just below Table Rock mountain. In fact the river bottom was about a 30 minutes walk from our farm. In the early 1960's the river bottom was largely undeveloped. There were a couple of homes down there and a saw mill had operated in the area at some time leaving traces of itself here and there and there were some fences we had to negotiate to get to the river's edge. The trees along the river were deciduous leaving massive piles of leaves where constantly in a state of decomposition. I the late autumn to Summer the increased moisture in the air from rain and snow gave a heavy wooded fragrance to the whole region.

John and Tom and my older brother , Ross. Seemed to spend a lot of time in this region. The whole area was a natural place for pare-teen boys. We explored endlessly. We had found the remains of cabins and an old boat dock which was in pretty good condition from when the rive had been higher. The boat dock now sat over a pond which had been left over when the rive must have cut deeper in it's path or the course had moved North. The pond was fed by a number of tributaries linking back to the main river.

In the winter we traipsed round the river with our shot guns in hopes of bring down ducks but Ross, who,owned an ancient “Long Tom” single shot 12 gage had the best probabilities of doing real damage to the fowl on the old river bottom. We all carries matches and when we could scare up enough fry wood would start a fire and smoke our corn cob pipes. Even during the wettest of seasons we could find enough dry leaves for a smoke.

In the Summer we would strip off our clothes and swim in the pond and if we were
more daring swim up the channels to the river itself. Not far from the cabin where the channels had been cut from the river were a number of small sandy beached islands with good foliage and trees. We would often on the Southside of these beaches taking care to stay out of view of the main flow of the river. It was common for people to float down the river in inner tubes.

In a flash, this morning I had all these memories and more brought back as I inhaled this morning's gift...It smells like, it smells like... Spring...