Participant Reflection

5 people gathered at 8am. Bright sun. Our walk leader Alison is a Refuge Ranger at Sachuest, and asked us to help her see this place anew again. Before we set out a man joined the circle, but said he wasn’t going on the walk. He wanted to check with Alison about a time he’d seen her recently. He worried he’d offended her. She brushed it off and we invited him to walk with us. Instead he told us how important this place was to him and that his mother always said he was conceived there. So many birds to see at Sachuest. Alison was wearing barn owl earrings. Two people came from the Providence-area -- one had never been. She has an old dog who can’t take big walks anymore. You can’t bring dogs to Sachuest so she had never come. We dipped down off the trail and when we came back two people asked us to wait. They pointed down the path where two men in non-athletic gear seemed to be at a starting line. “There’a a father and son who are about to race each other.” We all cheered and it was a close call -- even as the son lost a shoe along the way. We got to a dead tree that is really special to two of the participants. Alison told us that some people think about cutting down those trees because they might be dangerous, but she won’t let them. Alison found some rocks with markers that she said can be traced to Pangea. “This was connected to what is now Africa.”