Wonder: Not Sold In Stores

T. remembers being called for Jury Duty in her hometown not once, not twice, but three times. She managed to avoid her civic duty twice, pleading school — college or teaching — but the last time, she was only packing to move to another county. They figured it was the last time to snag her, and the judge, smiling sweetly, made her duty stick.

Well, okay. He let her off as an Alternate, which meant she only had to stay for the final summation and vote if someone else kicked off. And she got to watch a paraplegic jury member drink herself under the table at lunch each day (“What? Am I ever driving anywhere? No!”), and learned a new word — fiduciary — and learned that you in fact can make real estate as boring as heck. As lovely as the Martinez City Hall is, she bade it a fond farewell, and only went to Downtown to witness her sibs’ adoption day, or to visit the library. Until the beavers came.

Oh. My. Word. The first weeks of the rodent’s residency in 2006, the entire town managed to meander past the canal on their lunch breaks. People peered in, counted, recounted. They oohed and aahed. They dropped in wood. When the beavers reproduced it made the national news. You know that when T. is in the States, she has to go by, just to check out what they’re doing with their dam these days.

Wonder… the gift of the unexpected in our day to day. And yes, if you’re from the country, and have to remove beavers from your water supply, you might think our reaction was pretty laughable, but we don’t care. The beavers, in the downtown area of a small city, are pretty magical.

Living in a city — any city, not Glasgow in particular — can wear down the spirit, and gray out the senses. If you’re head down and slogging, it’s because you don’t believe there’s anything to see — (or, if you’re in Glasgow, you believe that if you don’t keep your head down, you’re liable to step in something, or get seagull crud dropped in your eye) but sometimes, there is… Just one flight of stairs down from the regular path, a little meander behind a graffitied building or two, under a bridge and through a tunnel… and a whole new world emerges.

It’s not like this was some hidden place — the riparian trails criss-cross all throughout the city, linking public spaces and apartment buildings to the canal; this piece of the Kelvin eventually makes its way to the Botanical Gardens and beyond. However, the fact that we’ve been walking through this city for almost two years now, well locked into our groove, and just — stepped off the beaten track and found this… well, it was a gift.

We’ve gone off the beaten track before — generally in small villages where we don’t know anyone. We’ve looked for hidden gardens in Helensburgh (and gotten rained on), discovered crumbling castle follies and meadows full of little cottages — that last one was in Italy. But we never thought we’d find the ruins of a mill a few blocks from our apartment. Surely, not someplace leaf green and fresh in the middle of the city. Not right off the road in the graffiti-splashed, gray-and-grime world of Glasgow.

We got rained on this morning. We also met a Scottish deerhound and her taciturn owner. We watched a snail cross the trail. It wasn’t as cool as a beaver, but the sound of the river rushing behind us, and a bird defending its territory first thing in the morning brought with it a sense of wonder all the same.

It’s the little things.

The North Woodside Flint Mill has an interesting history. Check it out here, and our little moving picture show.

– D & T

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