suburbia re-animated

Yanking trail shoes over socks is enough. Indy hears from three rooms away; I may as well have said walk in his ear. He muzzles me and sings his petition. I rev him, Where’s your leash? Now his croon is resolute.

Indiana Jones is a Yakima Farmdog, a blend of Red Heeler, Husky, and Shepherd. These are guesses, of course, since he bears no pedigree. We rescued him from a vagabond lifestyle that wasn’t working out well.

Deep-chested and athletic, Indy’s the sort of dog that looks good in a bandanna, racing the surf’s curled edge. His medium-length hair is colored caramel, white, and black from tapered snout to crescent tail. Our house is snowed with fur whenever his undercoat blows.

It’s January, dark and clear; a near-full moon makes the chill visible. We push uphill out of our neighborhood and find walking rhythm. I coax my breath to cooperate. Last-minute, I divert onto a side trail; Indy is pleasantly surprised. Trees consume the moonlight and leave us none. It’s easy to picture nocturnal predators, biding, strung for violence. I switch on my Coleman flashlight and script implausible scenarios for Indy and me, repelling a cougar with cinematic panache.

We emerge onto the Tolt Pipeline Trail. The eastern sky is starry, silverscreen-indigo; the flashlight is unneeded under a big moon. Walking westward, an unlikely shade of teal tints the gloaming horizon. This kind of blueness is pilfered from summer and captivatingly out of place – like a full-throated baritone holding one last note.

Indy is suddenly on alert, ears up, white chest flaring. He fixes silently on a shadowed shape barely moonlit. Rabbit? (Good thing I kept him leashed.) I aim, slide the light on. The Coleman’s tight circle tags a figure: untamed, adaptive, gorgeous coyote. I hold my beam on him and he holds his eyes on me, exiting... more like a bird than a dog, ground-flying… more like a ghost than me, vanishing.

I’m a strip of celluloid pulled from the cutting room floor, spliced into someone else’s movie. I look over my shoulder. He wouldn’t follow, would he? He’d keep to the shadows anyway. Indy knows he’s gone and relaxes. Another glance back: two planes fly oppositely, miming stars. Orion bows low to Luna. Cold clearness, so beautiful; suburbia re-animated.

Manure & Ice

I don’t remember why I was chasing the butterscotch cat. It darted out of sunlight into the dusty shadows of my cousins’ barn. I followed at breakneck speed.

My grandparents kept a tidy barn with a floor that wasn’t slick with a film of silt, hay, and manure, but my cousins didn’t hold to such standards. So imagine my surprise when my feet slipped from under me and I found myself falling forward with arms outstretched Superman-style. My flight was not sustainable and I hit the floorboards with a smack and a splat and a long, messy skid.

Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn’t the last time I would rush into a place I didn’t need to be, chasing after something that wasn’t mine.

I also had a wintertime adventure at that farm. There was enough of a hill for sledding, and we made the most of it. With a running start, we could get up enough speed to make it across a flat stretch of yard, and then out onto the frozen duck pond.

The more we sledded, the faster the track became, until we were getting as far as halfway across the pond. Late in the day I decided to really throw myself into it and see what would happen. I hit the packed snow at the perfect angle and velocity. I gripped the steering wings of the Flexible Flyer, and held my boots up to keep from dragging on the track behind me. The sled’s red blades kicked up bits of snow and ice that pelted my face and made my eyes water.

When I reached the edge of the pond I could feel that I had enough speed to make it all the way across the ice. I squinted into the stinging draft, scanning for a good place to stop. The far side of the pond was thick with dead reeds that poked up through the mottled ice like big brown straws. It was swampy and not solidly frozen, but this realization crystallized in my mind a blink too late.

I crashed into the reeds and broke through the ice into scummy pond water. Fortunately, it was too shallow for anything disastrous to happen. I was drenched and chilled, and done sledding for the day, but otherwise none the worse for the wear.

Bookend stories of reckless abandon that ended badly, but not catastrophically: I keep retelling them, trying to decipher their meaning. Does wisdom require me to attenuate my adventurous impulses? Should I frame my curiosity within the bandwidth of safe outcomes? Can I touch the sacred without making direct contact with the stuff of the earth? Is there any faith without danger?

Snowday

I’m wearing two pairs of socks and huge hiking boots. Granted, huge hiking boots are the only sort that fit me. I am doing something that is a little too fast to be called trudging, and considerably too slow to be called running. It’s something in between, and it’s the best I can muster.

The Pacific Northwest doesn’t get much snow – at least, not by the standards of someone who grew up in New York State. On the rare winter days when it snows here, it doesn’t usually stick around for long. Today is different – today we have real snow.

Boomer hails from Wenatchee and shares my appreciation for the genuine article. He turned twelve years old last autumn, but that doesn’t stop him from probing the cold powder like a pup. I can’t ignore the fact that he’s aging, though. For one thing, his hearing has begun to deteriorate. Sometimes he doesn’t hear me when I call him. In fact, that’s why I’m on his trail right now. We need to turn around and head home, but he’s oblivious to my shouts. He cruises unswervingly onward into the west.

As much as I don’t really want to be chugging up this snowy hill, I’m conscious of at least two good things about it. The first is that I am, amazingly enough, gaining on my little canine friend. The second is that my wife has joined us on this walk, and she’s watching me. It occurs to me mid-huff, that (puff…) I’m showing off for her. I’m proving that the old buck can still hoof it on the high places. We’re able to share this unspoken fiction because, to her great credit, my wife chooses to see me through the charitable lens of her imagination.

I’ve closed to within five or six feet of Boomer and he still hasn’t heard me coming up behind him. An old memory flickers into focus. I see myself as a young Scout, furtively following my Dad through the woods. He was helping me earn a merit badge that had something to do with tracking. My challenge was to follow him for a specified period of time without being seen or heard.

It was autumn, so the ground was covered with dead leaves and brittle twigs. That didn’t matter. I moved with the quick, decisive stealth of a Mohawk brave. I remember scampering from tree to tree, crouching behind mossy stumps, and going flat in the undergrowth whenever my Dad looked around. It was so exciting to discover this hidden talent of mine!

At the end of the prescribed span of minutes my Dad stopped walking and called off the hunt. As he checked the box next to the tracking requirement in my Scout book, I asked him how I’d done. With the vaguest trace of a smirk he told me that I’d sounded something like a young buffalo. I was pretty sure “Young Buffalo” wasn’t the name of a famous Mohawk brave from days gone by.

But today I’m panting up a snowy hill after a hard-of-hearing dog. Even with my limited aptitude for stealth, Boomer hasn’t yet perked to my crashing footfalls. From pointblank range I shout his name, and he swivels around in shock. His ears go back, and he curls into a submissive pose. This is unprecedented in his experience with me so he isn’t sure what’s going to happen next. He fears it might involve punishment. It doesn’t. I’ve learned lately that his problem isn’t rebellion (well, at least not in this case); his problem is entropy.

I say, “C’mon, let’s go home.” Relieved and chipper he makes for the foot trail that leads toward home. He’s a puppy again for a few more minutes. I let him run a little ways farther before putting his leash back on him.