--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> So, a question to the Fairfield dwellers here amongst us: > do people walk much in Fairfield? For pleasure, that is, > just for the sheer joy of taking a stroll? It would seem > to me, from the one time I was there for a few hours back > in the mid-80s, that it would be that kinda place.
Yes, you're right! It is and we do. Fairfield is a great place for walking around and drinking in the general beauty, both in town and out in the country. In town, one of our favorite strolls is simply around the Square and its environs, as people have been doing here for 170 years anyway of recorded history. (I wouldn't be surprised if the Sacs, Foxes, and Ioways weren't doing something similar here for millenia earlier. They still lived within 8 miles of town in the early 1840s, when every day one would see at least a few Indians around the square. Ancient burial mounds lie just east of town and just south of town.) Of course, First Friday is a whole other phenomenon around the Square. Throngs of happy revelers, good music, good art, good food everywhere ... but either way, I imagine the feeling is much like the old Spanish processions around the plaza towards the end of the day. Lots of love in the air -- not just romance (though plenty of that too, for those so inclined), but deep love, the kind that comes from seeing friends we've known for 20 or 30 years, and seeing the young faces we remember in their kids... This place is the closest thing I have ever known to a genuine home town, and I love it for that. The other day in Everybody's Market, I was awe-struck by a three-year old, who looked *exactly like* the little daughter of a woman we lived with in Seattle in the '80s. They left as I was cashing out. "Man! That little girl looks just like T.," I said, almost to myself, to which the cashier replied, "Oh, T.? That was her going out, with her little daughter! They live here now!" So now we smile at each other everywhere...Ahh, Fairfield! I think I've mentioned how closely it fits the traditional description of heaven for many of us -- just think of someone from one of your past lives, and before you know it, they're standing right in front of you. As I've said on FFL, we're really all already dead -- in fact, were more dead when we were "alive" and sleepwalking through life -- and now that we are truly dead, and have let it go, Life shines as beautifully as we can bear it; everything we imagine we want is ours almost before we've had the thought. And what is truly beautiful, I am not alone in this -- many, many here share this same Fairfield. Outside of town, since I lived here in the '80s, a lot of new trails have gone in, one of our favorites leading from Chautauqua Park up northeasterly through some deeply Powerful pines all the way to Waterworks Park, where we can now swim at a gorgeous little beach. And since this winter, another new walking trail now leads along the creek at the bottom of Chautauqua Park and around to the south (still following the creek) through woods and red-winged-blackbird- owned marshes to end up in Lawson's Woods at the Golf Course. We always meet a fair number of others coming the other way, quietly enjoying these walks evidently as much as we do. It's a great place to be. *L*L*L*
