Please allow me a moment to grieve about something completely unimportant before I get to this most important message: The Bruins are out of the playoffs.
I happened to catch David Pastrnak’s “press availability” on the Monday after the fall, and was blown away by what went down at the end, when the reporter snuck in “How did you get through this year?” (Pastrnak and his partner, Rebecca Rohlsson, lost their 6-day old son last June.) Indulge me and scroll to 3:56.
I won’t reduce that beautiful statement from a kid with more than just swagger to dog training, but I will say that maybe that’s the biggest thing I’m learning from our pup as we try to teach each other.
Life’s busy. So here, in bullet points, is some of the news nowhere near fit to print. But you–pretty sure Molly is the last one reading–are a captive audience, and time’s passing in my little Mud County Almanac, so here goes.
Takin’ it easy ain’t so easy. We’re in week two of spay recovery, and we are following one set of doc’s orders to a T: No swimming. The taking it easy bit? Well, we did what we could. She still looks a bit like a July humpy, but she seems as ready to run and jump and rumble as ever, and I have to say, my tolerance for leash walks may be lower than hers.
First two boat trips were a success, if only a few keeper crab harvested. Cedar was in fact wildly excited as we backed down the ramp, but maybe that was because she thought she might get to swim.
She did growl at a little boy as we came off the boat. I need to get her more little kid time.
Garden’s planted. I will once again prove that the only thing that won’t turn green in SE Alaska summers is my thumb.
First bear video of the season, thanks to Molly and Steve. (I had just walked past that area 30 minutes before, and Steve actually walked past the bear carrying poor Lucy, RIP, who went on to a place where all the bears are friendly two days later.)
Robins have apparently hatched, Devil’s Club is unfolding with an eerie sort of power, Skunk Cabbage is starting to look the radioactive vegetables on Gilligan’s Island, ad we are in fifth gear GREENing mode.
Tim’s commencement ceremony is next Sunday, Katie finishes her first year of college. Katie will soon be home to help with Cedar duties (right Kate?).
Next Friday, we say our formal good byes to Paul McKenna. We’ll gather as a family on Great Herring Pond in Plymouth, his spirit-place, where he and my mom and maybe even the lake helped us form our notions of life and family and hope. (The life part always included a dog.)
Skunk cabbage transformation…
A few more images from the week.
Big bear in the hood. This might be the one who knows how to open car doors. There goes the neighborhood.
Supervising the boat launch.
Lapdog?
Helper
Always a toss up whether to return the fetch or listen or watch or think.
Bro Dave and I had four extra sea legs on board for the shakedown cruise last night. Both boat and leg-bearer fared well. Cedar has a future in being our onboard bait-tester. She approved of last night’s crab bait, no question, with a slight preference for chicken parts over herring.
We’ll see how she processes any harvest data.
Honestly, I think she’ll be good company on the water, in a sweet-nuisancy kind of way.
Well, the hummingbirds are here. A black bear sow with three cubs is frequenting the meadows near the dump. And the salmonberry blossoms are pinking their pink. But the big news chez Cedar is that she’s supposed to do something called “taking it easy” and there will be no swimming for two whole weeks, or just over 5% of her time on earth (and in the water) to date. Oh well. At least there won’t be Cedar saplings.
In my second year as a teacher 30 years ago, I taught a class that I still need to learn from. A group of kids in the Aleutians and I developed a youth-edited weekly publication that kids in the K-12 school clambered to read every Friday. It was a quirky little juried collection of non-fiction narratives, edited with an emphasis on brevity. (I know, how did Mr. McLongwinded ever pull that off? Luckily, most kids are surprised when a teacher asks them to just be honest instead of adding fluff.)
Josh, a beyond-quiet, quiet kid wrote this piece for our second issue.
Today, as I get my bearings back home after a couple of weeks away, I’m thinking of the word “though” in his final line, “It was home, though.” It’s amazing and kind of cool how we put up with all kinds of dissonance and quirks and things we don’t get or like when our minds and hearts find home.
If there’s any one theme in this blog, I suppose it’s a dog teaching her human how to find home.
What’s changed in my absence? Not much and a whole lot. The “unfolding” is still going on in the woods. (We both snacked on the big tree trail this morning; I on some fiddleheads and Cedar on some Twisted Stalk (watermelon berry) leaves. The skunk cabbage is starting to show its Brobdingnagian genes. The varied thrush have apparently purchased all of the available frequencies for forest radio. And the blueberry and salmonberries are pantomiming their “Nothing Gold Can Stay” routines.
The big shift I got to chuckle about this morning is that Cedar is now the experienced one on the trail. She knows more about May’s greening in this particular center of the universe than I do. I hadn’t even seen the Twisted Stalk until she began her leaf chewing this morning.
Cruise ships are here. Katrina is 900 miles away. People on Juneau Community Collective, the meanest place on the internet, are arguing that “Collective” in the name should be changed because it’s “too communist,” the maritime ghetto (as Katrina calls my side yard) is calling for attention, the rains will be back soon, chinook populations are endangered, the glacier is receding, and I can’t get ahold of the vet about you know who’s spay appointment on Monday morning.
It is home though. And it’s nice to be here again.
You must be logged in to post a comment.