On yesterday morning’s walk, you’ll be relieved to know, everything was in its rightful lane. The trees were just trees. Skunk cabbage were just their own yellow darts, not even stinking yet. One far off varied thrush was sketching his thin stripe of sound. A couple of ravens croaked. Some Swainson was practicing his scales. The sky was just the sky.  And my back hurt.

Not much else to report.

So I thought about swimming. My body does indeed keep score, and a bit of back pain directs me to the pool. I don’t care how slow I am. When I get past my reluctance to go indoors and leave Cedar behind, I travel beyond the pool when I swim. FreeDog for Tom brain.  My thoughts often drift (ha ha) back to those long leisurely days of summer on Great Herring Pond as a kid. We must have spent half of most days in the water, first kicking around learning to swim with hands on the sandy (and sometimes slimy) bottom, later snorkeling among mussels, and lake slime, and occasionally an eel and a bass. (I remember my cousin got so excited when he saw BOTH at once he screeched from the surface, “There’s a beel and an ass down there!” We got scolded. But it was nothing a night of marveling over the Jacques Cousteau volumes couldn’t heal.) We were amphibious. 

These days, of course, the brown dog is the amphibian in the family. I love to watch her swim. Those webbed paws do the job and she’s getting really speedy. Here are two clips from a couple of outings this week. Nothing too remarkable. The Lab, I guess, was just a Lab. 

Fetching two balls at once gets harder when one sinks!