A Year of Gratitude – October 23, 2024

I found my gratitude today in a place I can always count on finding it: holding Penny Lane’s leash on a long walk. We had another beautiful day and we made the most of it.

This spot right here is my favorite portion of our fall walks.  This is the carpet of golden leaves that collect underneath our sugar maple. They’re unlike any other foliage we have on our farm.

I look forward to these leaves each fall. They remind me of the years when my children were small. They would play in these leaves, raked into piles for them.

These are the leaves that Penny Lane and I have been walking through each fall for our walks on warm days like today and brisk days when I need a jacket and hat to compensate for the brisk fall air. When I think about those walks, I can hear the crunching of these leaves in my imagination. When the carpet is deep, the noise is loud in the most adventurous sort of way.

Today, as we tromped through that golden carpet, I wondered how many times Penny and I have done so. She’ll be ten years old next spring, so the number of fall walks is up there, far more than I can pretend to calculate.

No matter how many we have taken, I hope that we will have the chance to take many more. No matter how many we have taken, I am thankful for each and every one of them. 

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.