When I was a kid, there was nothing better, nothing more exciting, than the discovery of some invitingly unknown path in a place I thought I already knew. Finding a bit of mystery in the known and the everyday. So today, while we were out for a walk with the kids at Nana’s and Papa’s, we decided stroll over to a very familiar area, the swimming pool, where we discovered a mystery: a fence atop a small ridge.

The morning had started with a mystery: the Boy had lost in the night his blue pickup truck, and rather than simply pull the bed out and retrieve it (for if it wasn’t in the covers or under the pillows, there was only one place it could be), I let the Boy search on his own. Being the Boy, he looked in some original places.

As soon as sister woke up, the urge to build a fort overwhelmed the desire to find the pickup truck, and so the bit of mystery in the middle of the morning disappeared.

It reappeared at Nana’s and Papa’s. First there’s the strange bit of mystery in getting holiday decorations up. To begin with, the mystery of finding everything. Then there’s the mystery of figuring out how it all goes back together. Not to mention the mystery of the season.

Mystery everywhere. Including, it turns out, in places we might never have thought to look. The weather was so gorgeous that we had to head out for a walk.

Of course the pool looks a bit mysterious with its winterizing cover.

But more mysterious, behind the tennis courts that the residents have turned into a dog park is a small ridge, the top of which is crowned with with a fence. Reaching the top of it, we all saw easily that it was not natural but instead part of a detention pond.

K insisted that it couldn’t be a detention pond proper because real detention ponds in such developments are well taken care of.

Perhaps that’s why there’s a fence.