![]() She laid these pieces with her own hands, maintained these paths, rode thunderous and strong across the acres. The trees are still barbed with remnants of electric fencing, white plugs that no longer carry shock and have been absorbed by burls. Together we walk along the paths where my grandmother once rode horses. ![]() They are dangerous in ways I never imagined there would be, and given all we do not know, we stick to the land that bears my last name. All are deemed too populated, too uncertain and unpredictable. We could stroll by our old apartment and down to the harbor, where the fishing boats are still coming and going and the buoys chime in turn. We could venture to the beach the bike path, or a nearby park. There are places less dangerous where we might go for a walk. Its carcass was nearly unrecognizable, just a mass of hair and flesh, and each time we ventured back it disappeared more and more until nothing-not even the bones-remained. Last summer we found a deer picked clean by coyotes, the same ones we hear cackling on windy nights. There are owl pellets and squirrel tails and sometimes whole animals. It's the decaying leaves we walk upon, the downed tree that blocks our path. Like the virus we are avoiding, it is invisible yet all around us. "Let's take a walk before dinner," I tell my partner, Whitney, and at five o'clock we venture into the trees with our little dog and the intention of finding death. I usually see them on the side of the road, waiting to pick apart some poor creature who met its fate near the interstate median. They kettle and bob, the waiver in their wings an easy tell that they are not hawks, not predators. ![]() Buzzards, turkey vultures, a committee of them. We see them circling one April afternoon, high in the sky above the woods behind our home. ![]()
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