Carolina and I were walking around the old milk house on the Gallia County Farm. I had moved some of my things into a downstairs area of the milk house, hoping I might be able to spend some time on the Farm, but I still hadn't been able to eradicate myself from Texas, and I was beginning to doubt whether I would ever be able to move to the Farm.

Just behind the milk house was an area overgrown with weeds. Carolina and I walked down a path which I had tromped out through the weeds, down a slopping ravine, to a sumpy section thick with mud. I managed to step in the black ooze and besmear my white tennis shoes. I guided Carolina around the mess so she didn't step in it.

When we came back out on the dirt road by the milk house, my pet Dalmatian Chaucer raced past us, bounding toward a group of trees growing beside the road. He jumped on one tree and began climbing up the side. I had seen him try to climb trees before, but had never seen him climb so high. He managed to paw his way two or three meters up the thick trunk. Finally he was so high, I doubted he would be able to come back down by himself. I saw what he was after – two squirrels were clinging to the outermost branches of the trees. Clearly the squirrels' strategy would be to jump to a neighboring tree and so on until they escaped.

When I looked back toward Chaucer, I was surprised to see another animal about the same size as Chaucer also climbing up the trunk of the tree. The animal had a gray coat, and at first I thought it must be a Weimaraner dog. Closer scrutiny revealed the animal to be a small deer. It hung precariously on the side of the tree a few more moments, then fell to its feet on the ground. Finally it ran off into the trees.

***

I was slowly driving a car around at the foot of the hill behind the Farmhouse. My father was sitting in the front passenger seat, talking with me. I was a little upset with him because he had used his bulldozer to clear out the ravine behind the milk house, the area where I had stepped in the mud. I had worked quite a while in tramping out a path in the area, and now he had simply roared in and undone all my work. I thought about saying something to him about it, but I refrained.

Instead I pointed out to the road on the east side of the Farmhouse, how water from Symmes Creek had risen out of the banks and covered the road. Another section of the lane close to the milk house was also covered with water.

As I pulled the car on up the hill to the rear of the Farmhouse, I told my father that I would like to become more involved with farming, but that I was still stuck in Texas. He suggested I join a farmer's group and start attending meetings. He suggested I might even become a lawyer exclusively for farmers and he mentioned a lawyer he knew named "Don Candy" whom he had always admired. He said I could become a "Don Candy" for the farmers. I told him I hardly knew anything about the legal problems of farmers. I thought they would want to know all about government programs of which I had no knowledge. I doubted I would want to do something like that.

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