and so it continues

Today was a beautiful spring day. it was 78 degrees outside and I was ready for a walk. I got my dog and grabbed her pink leash with the light pink hearts on it, so people would know she was a girl, and headed for the door. I don't know why but I started to think about the last time I had let my dog outside. My thoughts flooded to that dog that attacked Mugsy, which I later found out was a dog called a Chow-chow, a nice name for such an aggressive and giant dog. I realized that it had been several months since I had wanted to go outside with Mugsy at all. Today unfortunately, i knew that i had to "start somewhere" since mugsy was getting very pudgy for her little chihuahua/pug mix frame. Plus, I wasn't in the best shape of my life either so it was a beautiful day and it was time to get moving.
I started to walk up the usual way, up the street to the first main light about a quarter mile up the road then turn right and come back. The whole walk was usually a mile and took no more than 14 minutes. as I went to go toward the main stop light I stopped and thought about a place that i had not been to in years. The place was a doorway of sorts at least it felt like that to me. It was up the street a little and was the sight of an old drainage ditch. After years and years of water running through it, it had grown to be full of shrubs, flowers, herbs , weeds, dead broken logs, and one really beautiful and full Katsura tree whose leaves always reminded me of a heart.
I decided that I wanted to go see it even though it was gated off by the city and had a sign on it that read, "trespassers will be prosecuted." in my mind I had a right to go there and no city was going to stop me. I tugged at Mugsy to go left instead of right, she resisted for a moment but soon gave in and walked along side of me. Occasionally she would switch sides as she usually does in order to smell everything within her level.
About 15 minutes in to walk she started to whimper as we got closer to my memory area. I was determined to go since I kept getting lost in my own memories. I remember playing there with a young group of children that I was looking after. we were using it as our own imagination arena. We pretended to fight the goblins and monsters that were there as we flung spells and hid behind the broken log from our unseen attackers. I could remember how frightful and scary it had been when we heard a tree branch break on it's own while we silently listening waiting for the right moment to attack the imaginary goblins. That very real small moment of hearing the branch break caused us to wonder if there were more sinister, real forces at work as we hastily decided that it was time to go. the kids climbed up the small ravine first and as I looked back at the beautiful Katsura tree I would have sworn that I saw a face looking at me from beyond the leaves. I was both secretly scared and intrigued by that moment. Scared because of the feeling I got that the face I saw was really there and intrigued because the faced seemed to have been smiling as if to say, "i missed you."
I was torn from my memory as Mugsy started to forcefully pull backward and bark at something that was sending her into behavior that I had never seen before.