Falls Cafe walk

Here's the history...

...and here it is in reality.

I took the pictures I'm showing you over a period of two days. They were markedly different in sky color. 

This is a gate next to the hotel that leads through the park.

A detail of the entrance gate. 

I wish I had a blue sky background for this one.

Two bridges give access across the stream.

I'm at the Tui Glen Reserve.

What really constitutes wealth? 

I once worked with a man who had a very different outlook on life than I did. 
We were travelling together and I told him while we waited for our flight that I had recently made a huge find of morel mushrooms. 
"That's what you do in your spare time?" he asked, "You look for mushrooms?" 
"Sure," I said. "What do you like to do with your leisure?" 
"I don't have leisure. I use all my time to make money," he said. 

What a shame that is. I could have also told him how much I enjoyed finding a really big dead elm to use for firewood, except that I knew that he'd scoff that I needed to work in such a fashion to keep myself warm. Clearly, he had taken my measure and found me lacking. 

His idea of what constitutes wealth was very narrow. I think that I had a much broader, and healthier concept. While it was true that I didn't yet have much wealth as he defined it, I had many sorts of wealth he had no clue about. 

Now, I look at trees such as this oak pictured above, and remember how good I felt as a young man as I imagined how many days or weeks of fires such a tree represented. I felt wealthy standing before it and planning its harvest.  

Jeanne and I worked hard during our careers. We saved, and invested, and finally arrived at a point where we do have a modest measure of the sort of wealth my co-worker so valued. 
 I derive a huge amount of satisfaction when I think about the even greater wealth I still possess that can't be spent, or lost, or devalued. I have all the memories of the pleasure I took in living our quiet lives in a farming community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 

I imagine that my old acquaintance has amassed quite a fortune. I wonder how satisfied he is with it? Does he every think about quality versus quantity? 

A winding path along the Henderson Stream.  From here it is possible to hike all the way to the motorway and join it's network of pathways. Allie has often run this route. 

Lemons hang over someone's backyard fence next to the path. 

Let's cross back again on another bridge.

I've completed my walk and am returning to the bustop for the ride toward home. I pass a monument to grape growers and vintners on the way.  -djf