During a morning walk around her neighborhood, my partner and I find ourselves roaming a nature trail. The easiest path down there is to follow the cul-de-sac driveway. If you stick to the edge of the loop, eventually the pavement stops at a half-hill/half-stepping-stone slope that bleeds into a path of dirt and woodchips.
We turn left at the fork in the path and come to a bridge crossing over a stream. Crumbling concrete pillars jut out of the water on either side of the bridge, from where another stood before it. She says the eroding mound of mud and twigs just below the wooden planks used to be larger. Her sisters often leapt from the railing onto the little island when they were young, skipping from muddy stone to muddy stone to reach a tiny island in the middle of the rushing current. Tangled in the weeds of the former isle is an empty bottle of Fireball.
A sleek, waterlogged mat of hair glides through the water beneath us. My partner and I debate back and forth what this creature could be. We consider the possibility of a rat when its thick, scaly tail waves through the water behind it. Our camera’s view is obscured by drooping branches when the creature crawls ashore. From this spot on the bridge, I see a flash of brown and black scurry through the brush for just a moment before it vanishes. We watch the clip three times over as we walk, and her father later confirms it: a muskrat.
Dandelions occasionally dot the trail. They’re tiny, not big enough to spill pollen when plucked; somewhere in between peeking their neon petals out and shedding them for florets. We smear the buds along our arms like we used to as children, laughing at the bright lemons and honeys that stain our skin.
At the bottom of a soggy slope, we find a respite beside a more lively edge of the river. A tree stretches its branches nearly halfway across the water, and holding tight to a thicker limb is a wooden swing. The rotting plank is knotted in place by two fat, fraying ropes and looks as though it would collapse should a child in the summertime become a bit too daring. If you tuck your foot under just the right tree root and stretch a loose branch as far as you can reach, the tip can brush against the fraying rope. If you stretch the tiniest bit further, you can successfully hook the rope and bring the swing into arm’s reach.
Amidst the cattails and scummy water, the bones of the bones of a rotting hut appear when we turn back and cross the bridge again. Her finger in the air traces the caving roof and the blackhole of what could have once been a window pane. Maybe it was a hermit’s den or a children’s hideout ravaged by storms and sunstroke. If the marsh had a stronger carpeting, I might have suggested wading out to the bones.