Winners and Losers

The time that has evaporated since my last post has likewise smote the world as we knew it. I’ll offer no summary or sorrow for those changes here. There are winners and losers in every status change. A late season snowfall may wreak havoc with early flights of songbirds, but the white hare escapes the coyote once more. Similarly, these laps around the sun have aged Walker in both cruel and comical ways. He is slow, compared to his youthful self, and I can usually keep within sight of him under my own power – no wheels, skis or motors required these days. Several weeks ago I lost the GPS receiver on a hike, but his limited speed means that I can get away with the occasional burst of running to catch up. His hearing is poor, though he responds to high frequencies well. I use a kind of verbal chirp (BOOP!) to assist with his navigation around backyard obstacles. This process might appear, to a casual observer, that we are playing the child’s game of “Red light – Green light,” “Hot/Cold” or “Marco Polo,” but each chirp prevents him from stumbling over raised beds, or running head-long into railings.

He has not lost his insatiable need for adventure, however. Through the recent pandemic-induced isolation we have limited ourselves to local, obscure, and blind-dog-friendly excursions. We are fortunate to have several good options, but 8 weeks on these places feel mundane. Today we dug into the stomping grounds of Walker’s youth, when we pursued isolation only to minimize the probability that his long nose and short attention span would lead him to other hikers, homes, and highways. We piled into the car at sunrise, bound for one of the gated roads in the National Forest where we have never failed to find adventure.

He whisper-whined away the miles of this drive like any other, and I only just managed to slip my hand into his harness to ease his landing as he chucked himself out the door when we arrived. This harness, once used for skijoring, now serves as an assistive device to access the vehicle, get over blowdowns, and last week, to be extracted from a brook when he blindly ran off the side of a bridge.

As we lumbered up the first hills, I recalled how we have been to this place in search of song birds and game birds, and often found things we were not looking for. There have been bootleg campsites, bait piles, gut piles, and once: a hermit who claimed to be searching for Sasquatch. He’d come to believe there was a 1% probability of success in this area, relatively high for the mythical creature. Also one of Walker’s many flyers, when he outran the range of his GPS tracking system, started on this road and ended in the next watershed. More specifically, it ended on someone else’s dog bed, where he was warmed by the fire and served roasted chicken because “he looked cold and hungry.” And he’s a skilled con-artist to this day. Sensory systems be damned.

A loud crack to my left burst my thought bubble. Walker trotted on, oblivious. A mangy-looking moose clamored to escape our presence, turbid water still dripping from its prehistoric jowls. Walker’s thought bubble remained empty, as near as I could tell. We trotted together to the bridge below, rounded the hairpin corner, and started up the other side, only to meet up with our friend the mangy moose. He/she was not big, black, or glossy like a healthy northern moose. This one was lean, angular, and covered with mottled clumps of long pale fur so that it appeared to be the color of gravel and granite camouflage. I clipped the leash on Walker’s harness and let the ruffian get on with its day.

These are strange days, when I can be so lackadaisical about following the footsteps of a moose without the heartburn of containing Walker’s primal chase drive. I unclipped his leash when he started to fall behind my pace. I took pictures of the trillium peaking through snow, tried to name all the songbirds I heard, and tried to mimic the ones I’d never heard before so I’d remember their tune when I got home. I sometimes think Walker has a sense for the moments when my own mind wanders, because it was just then that he leapt over the bank in pursuit of something neither one of us could see.

I called and “BOOP’d” a few times, to no avail. In the absence of GPS tracking, I must be quick to decide whether I will chase, or wait for him to crash into enough rocks and trees that he gives up. From above, I can see that he is stumbling but persistent and alarmingly fast. I leaped from the bank myself, tearing through puckerbrush and hobble bush as fast as I can manage. The ground beneath the snow is thawed, thick, mud that sucks at my feet. The faster I run, the harder it pulls back. Walker’s lead is gaining. He is flummoxed by a blow down, doubles back, and re-establishes his trajectory to his invisible target. I make way over a row of boulders. He raises his nose to the air, pausing just long enough for me to snap a buckle into his harness.

“What the HECK dude?” I blurt, staring down at my shredded tights and soggy shoes. His skyward nose finds its target and dives to the ground, plowing through snow until it turns up a partially decomposed cloven hoof. I’m holding his harness so tightly he is nearly hoisted off the ground, but his front paws start spinning into the snow. I lift a little higher to remind him that I’m here, and to let him know I’d rather not find any more parts. THIS adventure never ends well. Walker does not have the iron-clad gut that Casey had, and if he consumes any of what he seeks, the household will not be allowed to sleep for a week. I snap one more picture and re-direct him to the road. He walks with his nose bumping my right calf, as if he needs the navigational assistance.

“Not buying it, you con artist” I mumble as I hand him a bit of kibble. “You win.”