Summer ended before September 12th. But you'd never know it that Sunday afternoon. Unless you felt a difference in the light from the sun. Unless you realized that tobacco-tinged leaves signalled early autumn. Unless you suffered allergies from abundant goldenrods.
My feet stamped along a trail of packed dirt, knobby roots and river stones around Fanshawe Reservoir while my eyes feasted on the views. Open meadows of purple asters with yellow centres offered landing pads for Monarch butterflies. Undulating farmland of now-harvested crops whizzed by. As did giant anthills of crushed aggregate from a stone quarry. I entered an airy forest of white pine and maple trees. Sunlit mushrooms graced a fallen trunk, and patches of blue-gray from a lake shimmered beyond the foliage of an embankment.
One hour into my brisk walk, I reached the 6-kilometer marker. And there, I stopped. To the west, stalky remnants of a harvested crop lay curled. To the east, the river Thames snaked through bush and marsh.
It was a perfect afternoon. The country air smelled, well, wonderful. My thoughts gained a new coherence.
But the goodness I experienced shattered like the crinkled glass from the passenger window of my car, when I returned. I had parked by the side of a dead-end country road, between the back entrance to the trail and the driveway of a farmhouse whose road sign read: "No Honey, No Bees." The maroon Jaguar, ahead of me, and the old red SUV in back, provided the comfort of civility, as did the gates of the Fanshawe Golf Club, diagonally across. But it appears I was not in safe territory. Nor was the Jag whose passenger window ended in the same state as mine.
Who would have resorted to this, I wondered. I discounted the riders on their mountain bikes who had earlier whizzed by me with acknowledgement. That left two suspect groups: the younger punks on too-small bikes who passed me while extending no courtesy, or the two thirty-something men who sat between parked cars in collapsible chairs, when I first arrived to the area. So eager was I to "smell the flowers" that I failed to assess their set-up. In hindsight I wondered if these men were "fishing" with no body of water in sight, other than the ice in their cooler, set between them.
Ultimately, the responsibility was mine. I had left my purse discretely tucked in the darker recess of the floor of my front passenger seat. Had I placed the purse in the trunk, well ahead of arriving, I might have been spared the break-and-entry. Or not. For when I discussed the incident with various others, I learned that some thieves now know what button to activate so as to pop up the trunk and check for valuables.
I am knee-deep in recovery of plastic cards for banking, driving, health/organ donation, Library, and Blockbuster Video. I've claimed a brand new pair of reading glasses against the VISA credit card that offers replacement value.
Unrecoverables: a purse, a wallet, cash and coins, bus tickets, subway tokens (for Toronto), and a few months of receipts, not yet organized.
When I reported the theft to the London police, Constable Fraser mentioned that since the economy has taken a tumble, "petty thefts have skyrocketed."
Perhaps this is the new status quo, until politicians stop giving us mixed signals on the economic recovery, and markets show us more consistency than they have in recent times.
So citizen, beware! Consider using a fanny pack next time you take a simple walk over local terrain. You could save yourself a load of grief.
