Summer Walks in the Woods With Holly

 I love the woods near our house, and so does our dog, Holly.

We’ve taken to walking there in the blazing heat and quiet of mid-day, when no one else is around.  The air shimmers, but once we enter the trails, heat falls away, and the trees shed cool, green shadows around us.

Sometimes, we might meet a man and his dog. I hold on to Holly’s collar, and call out, “Is your dog friendly?” for Holly has sometimes been nervous around bigger male dogs.  Usually, the answer is “Yes.”  So, I release her, and she walks over to his dog, while his dog trots up to check her out.  She and her new friend flirt happily, chasing each other, barking, play-inviting and dashing through the bushes.

When dogs play, it’s a poignant reminder to us about what we’ve lost — pure fun, with Time as a distant, banished entity.  Today, I watch, wonder and nervousness intertwined — for dog-play can turn deadly with the least little provocation sometimes — but all is well.  The man’s dog now trots up, grinning at me, wanting love.  I pat the dog’s head and praise him.  This one’s name is Polo (“Not after Marco?” I ask.  “No, after Edgar Allan Poe,” replies the man.  Ah, a literary dog-owner.  Nice!)  We watch our dogs cavort.  When I explain about the two times that Holly got besieged by an aggressive dog, hence my nervousness at first, the man says his dog would rather make love than war.  This makes me happy, of course.  Meanwhile, Holly is barking happily at Poe-lo, who answers her, and they chase and chase and chase each other.

Very soon, I feel Time turning the earth like a wheel.  I need to move on.  I call to Holly, and she comes reluctantly.  The man and I say polite goodbyes, and we go our separate ways with our dogs.  The friendly anonymity of people with dogs in the woods in the daytime is a social fact.

Holly and I crunch on.  Occasionally, I see a deer dashing away in the distance, a brown and white blur.  Holly senses a disturbance in the force without actually seeing the deer, and runs in its direction, but at my call, “pup-pup-pup-pup-puppy!” [sung in a five-three intervallic chant, or pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ga (shuddh) to Indian-music folks], she comes bounding back, tongue hanging out sideways, a grin on her face, and her tail flag-wagging.  I realize I don’t need to have her on an actual leash (except that in the city, where traffic, scared people, and squirrels might pose a risk) – she and I are connected by an invisible one.

We make our way up rocky trails and mossy ones, with pine-needles soft under our feet, and wild blueberry bushes lining some paths, and reach our favorite lookout spot, an outcrop of rugged rock jutting into the sky.  We sit quietly and gaze out, two beings in an envelope of stillness and contentment.  Our communion is absolute.  I wish I could read her mind — mostly, it’s empty like mine, I imagine.  She shifts around, and settles closer to me on the post-noon hot rocks.  Somehow, this heat is not unbearable.  It’s the heat from the roads that makes summer awful.  When the earth herself gives off heat, I don’t really mind, as long as there’s some water and shade nearby.

And that reminds me — I pour water out for her to drink and she lap-laps it up gratefully.  A dog lapping water is one of the sweetest, most musical sounds in the world (humans glugging water, on the other hand — actually, those aren’t such bad sounds, either, just not as musical).  Done drinking, she turns her head away, and pants softly, checking the air for … wolves?  Wolverines?  Deer?  Foxes?  An ancient monster?  These woods are tame, really.  The most we’ll find here are rabbits, snakes, deer.  I’m sure there are foxes and raccoons, but I haven’t seen any.  I look at her nose quivering this way and that.  The sight fills me with tenderness, gets me wondering about her. Holly’s nose is her most mysterious feature.  What odorful wonders must present themselves!  The landscape must look like some sort of aromatic version of a topological map to her, and she must be mapping out terrain in ways I cannot imagine.  (Hmmm … Strange, four-legged animal, herbivorous?  Mark it here, here, and here.  Small, jumping, large-eared creature with small droppings?  There, oh, and there.  What’s this?  Oh no!  Not this! Better draw a nasal boundary around this — better not to mess with it.)

Shaking myself out of this silly train of thought, I look into her bowl,  and notice there’s some water remaining.  Not wanting to waste it, I wash her paws, which I imagine might be hot from all that dashing about.  I toss some of the last droplets of water into the heat-curled blueberry bushes.  The blueberries are long gone, but earlier in the summer, we sometimes go blueberry picking.  I didn’t this year, but my daughter and husband did, and came back with small, ripe blueberries, nothing like those monstrous, cultivated ones in the supermarkets.  These were sweet and tart, and delicious.  Next year, I shall go, too, and pick them.  The woods are generous.

The earth’s heartbeat is gentle here.  In the far distance is the hush of traffic.  We listen.  Cicadas shrill in a rising wave of sound.  A hushed bird speaks into this chorus, somewhere.  After a little while, we know without speaking that it’s time to head back.  She leads the way, and I follow, she leash-less and contented, and I unleashed, at peace.

When we reach the main trail, I put the leash back on, just before we reach the once-full pond, which is all sludgy now anyway, with the ragingly hot weather.  I prefer my dog non-muddy.  As we walk by the mud-clogged water, I yearn for its earlier state — there used to be ducks, even swans sometimes here.  Frogs would chant loudly, too.  I wonder where they are now.  I wonder whether they’ll return.  I mourn the passing of things with an intensity that I didn’t know I had.
Turning away, we head back to the road, with shimmering heat-waves emanating from the tarmac, and cross over the over-pass to the street that leads to our house.  Holly’s step quickens.  She knows home is imminent, and her whole aspect sings, as she pulls forward.  She loves the woods, but she loves home even more, I think.  When we reach home, she dashes up to my husband and my daughter, and lets them know all about her day with her flag-tail.  Then, she flops down heavily, and rests.

And so do I.  I like this simple life.  And I’m glad to have a dog who shares her talent for joyfulness with me.

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