November 8

It was gorgeous today – sunny and light with a soft Southerly that kept things unusually warm all afternoon (the morning still held on to the frosty chill). I was out raking yesterday’s mulch production into piles to spread on the garden and enjoying the orderliness of it all - the lawn has never looked so kept (I am not a raker as such) but at the same time thinking that it was a day for regrets – the options were too numerous, the possibilities too inviting - there would be many thing left undone. So my thinking turned – what would I regret the most? Certainly not a few piles of potential mulch – some oak, ash, cherry and apple leaves let uncollected. But a chance to take the canoe and discover a new pond, a small and inaccessible one, not too far but lonely…and to do it with my son, all too immersed in his own inaccessible world, and perhaps too our young Labrador, so exuberant and vital – this would be regret defined.

So I asked Pierre to join me on an exploration, and after some prodding, he agreed (the Lab needed no encouragement) and off we went with our faithful vessel tightly bound in the back of the pickup to find The Bog Pond…We found it, didn’t paddle (access to it was a long portage and the day was fleeting), but did walk out to the water’s edge – it was beautiful, isolated, with floating weed growth near the shore that looked solid but undulated like an underfilled waterbed when the Lab leaped to it to chase a stick before plunging on into the deeper water. It was a lovely discovery and a place to which we will return.

But what struck me most in all this was the realization of the potential of regret. To have a choice, an opportunity (which one never really knows will materialize), a vision perhaps, and to not seize it. Regrets – chances not taken, opportunities missed, lips not kissed…I am glad that we left the leaves piled for tomorrow, maybe…