branch I could bring back the berries. As I took them from their home one at a time I marveled at their size, and then my eye fell upon the raspberry of all raspberries. Tucked away at the very end was the granddaddy of them all. It was bigger than my thumb; now that’s a raspberry!
After I picked several quarts of these wonderful, perfect berries, Rover and I headed home for lunch. For dessert that day I enjoyed watching my family add sugar and cream to my morning’s harvest. Though I didn’t enjoy eating any of them myself, I still thought and think to this day I got the best end of that experience, the better of the deal. Berries and blizzards do go together, just like boys and dogs! The sermon is clear to me: anything you do is more pleasant with a companion. Like me, Rover didn’t like raspberries, so the more we picked the more ended up in the jar instead of in our mouth. More for the family than more for me: “Look not every man on his own things . . . ” (Philippians 2:4)
WATER
“Still waters” don’t have to be big waters like David talked about in his world-famous psalm: “ . . . He leadeth me beside still waters.” (Psalm 23:2). Granted, I have spent more time near brooks and rivers and creeks and streams, but my first experience with ‘still waters’ were the springs on my father’s farm with my dog Rover.
I loved as a child to walk through the cow pastures in search of groundhogs, and so did Rover. Dad had given me permission to kill every groundhog, better known as woodchuck, I could find. Their holes could break a cow’s leg, so they were a danger to the Holstein herd. On my adventures after the crafty woodchuck, Rover and I would often discover a spring near their burrows. On a warm afternoon, we would quench our thirst from the small streams draining from the rocky ledge. It was then I fell in love with spring water. There is no water on earth as sweet as water from granite. Once I located these special water sources, I would repeatedly return. Whether hunting or harvesting, picking rocks or picking mustard (a weed), rare was the time I came close to those springs that I didn’t stop by for a taste and a touch. Water from a rock will quench your thirst like no other water, just ask Rover; because he loved the refreshing taste just like me and would lap up as much as he could before following me on to our next adventure!
Something else I learned by these springs of water was that they were also excellent places for meditation. The sound of bubbling water out of the ground is one of the calming noises in the world (like walking along a sea edge on a beach on the Jersey shore like I am doing on the day of this writing). These constant streams of water generate a simple sound that provokes thought. One of my favorite springs was located in a pasture just below our old milking shed. Resting on a small hillside, the spring also overlooked a number of groundhog holes nearby. Often Rover and I would set by this spring watching for any woodchuck crazy enough to venture out of its burrow. We sat there hour after hour in my boyhood, and now I wonder if it wasn’t more for the mediation than for murder. It was an airy spot that was not only beautiful, but abounding with things to see. Beyond the pasture was a huge field (now owned by an Amish man named Eli) that was either blooming with potato blossoms, or filling the air with sweet clover, or yellow with ripening grain. Behind were the Sugar Woods, where the family had tapped trees for their sweet syrup. In front of me was a small pond that no doubt the spring helped to fill. It was a quiet spot that provoked thought and mediation, and now I see, memory. This kind of water quenches your thirst in more ways than one.
I remember well the woodchucks I wounded there, and the groundhogs I killed there, but I best remember the sweet hours of serenity Rover and I spent there. I also best remember the gallons of pure, clear water we drank there, and the countless breaks we enjoyed there. I never remember a ‘coffee break’ on the farm, but I happily recall the times dad would say after we finished a trip through the field picking rocks in the heat of a June afternoon, “Let’s walk down to the spring and get a drink!” How far that water had travelled underground I know not, but its sweet taste will never, ever be forgotten, for it was water with a friend. I know not if David had a ‘sheep-dog’ to help him in caring for his father’s flock (I Samuel 16:11), but I do know David must have known the places on the family homestead where he could take the sheep for a drink. Every day, maybe twice a day or more, David would have to lead the flock to water. As the sheep drank, what do you think David did? I believe he mediated and in those mediations he no doubt wrote some of his beloved psalms including the one that has inspired this chapter on Rover. Sitting by a bubbling spring and rubbing a dog’s head are great moments for mediation!
ELM
As a boy in northern Maine during the 1950’s and 1960’s, I lived on my family’s ancestral homestead whose history could be traced back to the year of 1861 and my great-great-great grandfather Hartson. On the front lawn of the original home (the first framed house ever built in Perham, Maine) of that farm once grew a stately elm tree. Whether it was planted there, or was there when the house was built nobody in my family seems to know, but what memories I have of that ancient tree and my dog ‘Rover’.
When I was a child that old elm had reached its zenith in life, probably nearing the grand old age of 150? The roots of that tree were massive reaching well beyond the limit of its shade. Its branches not only gave shade to the lawn, but the Blackstone Road that ran right beside it. Its position on the lawn was the highlight of a circular driveway. I remember mowing the lawn and having to push the lawn mower over the roots that ran above the ground in places. Its trunk could only be hugged if my cousins and I locked hands around it with Rover, paw to tail. Despite its wide base, it soon branched out only a few feet above the ground. This made it easy for me and my cousins to get into its top. It was a great place to hide behind in a game of ‘kick the can’, and it was a great place to defend in a game of ‘war’! It was usually the starting place for the child to count during a game of ‘hide and seek’. Its limbs and its branches provided wonderful places for ambush during a game of ‘Cowboys and Indians’ and ‘Rin Tin Tin’, the part Rover always played!
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