Down the hill behind the Tavern, a creek rushes through a crowd of cottonwoods which whisper among themselves in the warm summer breeze. If you wend your way through the trees, you'll come to a large oval rock that looks like nothing so much as a fresh loaf of baked bread, still warm from the sun's oven. if you pause here and wait, at the moment just before you have given up, you'll hear the distant sound of a mountain dulcimer. Turn your head slowly until you have determined from which direction it has come, and then go toward it.

You can't be in a hurry, as nothing worth finding is ever found while in a hurry. If you follow the sound through the course of a long afternoon, the music will find you, and that is just as it should be. And when it finds you, it will lead your steps down along a cool stone path to a small half-timbered cottage overgrown and tangled in roses, ivy, and fragrant wisteria. You can try the door, and you will find it open, and within it there is an old wooden rocker with cat sleeping on it's padded seat. As you enter in and are enveloped in an atmosphere of fragrant herbs, the cat will surely hear your tread, and disappear into room's dark corner. And now you will have the pleasure of resting in the rocker, and if you are lucky the music will grow some louder, and the cat will slowly creep toward you, it's purring like a soft chant against the melody. Close your eyes, stay very still, and you will feel the sudden light pressure of the animal on your lap, it's purring like the whirl of the stream over the rocks, or the leaves brushing each other in cottonwood trees.

And some very lucky wanderer, who has followed the music with a gentle and joyful heart, will hear, like a summer rain starting on a moss-covered roof, between the flutter of the dulcimer notes and the cat's purring, the light patter of soft and distant laughter.

Leej