The world gets bigger

After what seemed like a long winter of keeping Katherine inside, we’re now showing her a bit more of the world outside.  Since the chickens have taken over the lawn outside our door, we roam a bit farther for our playground.  I take her on a good number of long walks near our house, either in the backpack or in the stroller, and we often stop to explore the grass of a Cornell property a mile from our house.  When we’re in town we’ll stop at one of the many parks, or we’ll take advantage of the rolling green on Cornell’s campus, where K is fascinated by bicyclists and skateboarders, and where she catches the eye of a lot of students (primarily women).  Now that it’s also prime bird-watching season, we put her in the backpack and take her on birdwatching expeditions (well, Sydney watches, and I walk; Katherine likes to move) to half-a-dozen parks and trail systems around town.  I’m going to miss this place!

When we were out on a walk to a new place the other day I discovered that Cornell owns a large meadow just down the road from our house.  They have small patches of corn and shrubs there, but there are grass-covered paths for vehicles and the like.  Following a path into the woods, I found myself on an old footpath that led down into Brooktondale.  Halfway to the main road I came across two abandoned cars from the sixties.  There was something eerie about coming across abandoned motorcars in the middle of the woods.

Far less eerie was the walk we took today around–I kid you not–Quick Cemetery, in which most of the inhabitants died before the turn of the last century.

Now that we’re the parents of a little one, we’re enjoying the opportunity to look anew at the world.  And it looks pretty good!

Erin