First Walk

First walk is the whispered one, especially on mornings like this when a low fog hangs over the golf course and the air is crisp and not bitter. The long line of The Run looks like a cottoned hallway ahead of us, with a low, chalky ceiling and only a faint warm glow from the new sun. The birds are mostly silent, chirping irregularly and softly as though keeping a secret. Everything whispers around us, even our footfalls. In the distance and overhead, a small flock of geese––perhaps leaving Marston Lake on the far side of the golf course––flap their wings with the great exertion it takes to lift their bodies from the ground and propel them through the air. The lead calls out to its few followers and one replies but the mist swallows and muffles their voices, makes them almost beautiful and melodious as they fall back into silence and pass unseen overhead. Duncan looks skyward at the place where the beating of their wings originates and then ambles forward, sniffing the ground. Not even the leaves at our feet make a noise. The squirrels perch on the low branches of the elms and mark our passage in silence and indifference.  Sleep and dreams are still in our eyes and limbs so we move slowly, without urgency, our only direction forward, and we wake slowly in each others company, glad to be alive and in this moment, happy that we, too, know the secret the birds think they keep to themselves: the sun will rise and burn this mist away, and the day will be beautiful, as all the days before it have been.