Blue Ridge Country November/December 2021 - 6

FROM THE EDITOR
TINY LESSON IN THE FOREST
The Little Yellow
Man in the Woods
A bendy-armed guy can make for good greetings
and warm feelings.
By KURT RHEINHEIMER Photo by GAIL RHEINHEIMER
T
his was in the Carvins Cove Natural Reserve, the
11,200-acre preserve surrounding the reservoir
that provides most of the water to Roanoke, Virginia.
The park, recognized as the second-largest
city park in the nation, also has some 60 miles
of trails for hikers, bikers and horseback riders.
Along one of the prettiest of those trails-
flanking the full reservoir-I was walking with granddaughter
Ava, then six, as we trailed behind her father
and brother and Gigi, aka The Greatest Day Hiker Of
Them All. Ava stopped and pointed just off the trail,
having seen a tiny yellow plastic man-six inches tall
with long flexible arms and legs, a big Walmart smiley
face and a black-penned note across his round belly that
read, " Have a Great Hike! "
Simply a perfect find for someone Ava's age and
walking through the woods full of leaves and twigs and
rocks and an old man.
" Look, Papa, a little yellow man! He's really cute,
isn't he? " She stepped over to the log where he was
perched-maybe six feet off the trail-and brought him
back to the trail to inspect further as we walked. She
held him carefully and inspected him with equal thoroughness.
I
agreed that he was cute and we walked on toward
our destination, the edge of Carvins Cove for lunch. We
talked, Ava and I, about how he got there, who might
have put him there, how fun he was to find and about
how he might feel being out here in the woods, standing
in a stump.
And then, in another quarter mile or so, as she looked
off to the side of the trail, she said, " You think he might
like to stand over there on that log? "
It was a good-size log with some flattened spaces in
it, and I said yes, I thought he would like that spot. She
walked over and carefully placed him so that he was
6 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
Kurt and Ava walk a trail at Carvins Cove Natural Reserve.
looking out toward the trail, with one bendy arm raised
as if in greeting from his new sunny perch.
" I think a lot of people will like to see him there, " she
said. She was pleased, I was pleased, and we walked on
toward lunch.
We eventually caught up with the others, shared a
pleasant lunch beside the reservoir and began our walk
back. I had it in mind to be sure to have us wave to little
yellow man on the way back, but neither Ava nor I remembered.
I
thought little more of the little yellow man until
a few weeks later when I was reading a blog post from
an old friend and fellow hiker, talking about how he
had been walking out at Carvins Cove one day and
had come across a little yellow man on a stump. And
then, he continued, a few weeks later had seen the same
bendy guy on another log in the same area and thus decided
that little yellow man was meant to be his hiking
companion.
I sat down and typed out the story of Ava and the
little man and sent it along to my friend.
A few hours later into that rainy morning, he emailed
back that Smiley Boy, as he called the little yellow man,
during his brief possession, was back in the woods where
he belonged.
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Blue Ridge Country November/December 2021

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