My friend Todd sent me that photo, so how could I not make an Easter post? The resurrection performed at 1410 Mary Ellen Way, inspired and supervised by our protagonist, is that of a young spruce tree. Its survival would surely be a miracle.
Cedar
A blog and a dog
Category: Week 35
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.
The AKC missive for week 35–yup that’s how old The Brown One is–warns of regression in training and implores the good dog owner to review even the simplest of commands.
As always, I find myself wondering if we’re gaining or losing ground. Cedar’s response to COME lately is often a “Yeah, I’m coming Dad, right after I sniff this, chew that, peek around the corner… and yeah, here I come (slow saunter).” Often she waits for my mean voice, which actually tends to work these days. In the end, she mostly gets the job done.
I’m reminded of my principal days. I had a supervisor who was big on implementing canned programs with “fidelity” but when that made absolutely no sense (as in most of the time), he would back off and say some things required “loose” management, other things “tight.” (Another post some day on that horrible co-opting of the beautiful word, “fidelity.”)
A dog walker I encountered on Sandy Beach the other day spoke about an obedience instructor who insisted that a dog should NEVER be off leash, unless in an enclosed area. Now that is tight. I’m on the loose end of the spectrum, as I probably was as a teacher, thinking that “lessons” will find their way to expression eventually, even if they don’t seem to stick right away. My buddy Jeff and I called that “teaching by osmosis” (or radiation)…Like, eventually the “kids” will mature enough to “get it” … and the experience has a half-life…but it’s better to move on than perseverate and bore or frustrate us all.
Yesterday, neighbor Buck noticed Cedar keeping a loose leash as we met up (Buck with girl-toddler June and dog-toddler Midnight) while “Middie” strained against her leash. I hadn’t even realized Cedar was being nice and chill.
Cedar spends a majority of our time outside off-leash these days . And because I like it that way, that’s the way it’s going to be (unless one of us really screws up). We’ll keep working on the recall (have a had a good couple of HEELS with distraction lately, after a kind of miserable fail trying to keep her away from a skate skier who passed us up the other day). Maybe I just shouldn’t let that happen.
I’ll leave you with part of this Amos Lee tune (smart musician who quit teaching after a year), whom I’d rather listen to than my old boss. Keep it loose, friends.
I think the birds slept in this morning. I wanted to. Woke up at o-dark thirty to the house being shoved by a northerly gust. Cedar’s faith that it may just be worth having another day got me moving, as always.
The woods seemed especially stingy with sound today. A raven croak here… An eagle ruckus there. And finally, as if begrudgingly, on the way back from our walk, the crazy mechanical stutter of a woodpecker (it must be more machine than animal) and one or two Swainson’s Thrush calls. I think Richard Nelson said something like they emit a “rainbow of sounds;” this morning maybe more like a frozen waterfall.
It’s a good day to be on land. Even the ocean looks grouchy, old, almost Atlantic. As if it’s tired asserting its dominance over unprepared mariners. But on it goes. The mountains seem closer on these high pressure, northerly days.
The Ted Hughes term, “blade light” (“the wind wielded blade-light”) has stuck with me since I first read “Wind” at age 21. The light this time of year in Juneau is the ultimate mood-altering drug. As sunsets move farther to the north, early evening light streams into our kitchen, and — while highlighting just how dirty the windows and floor are—always lifts me a bit from the humdrum. But this northerly stuff— high pressure system with less moisture in the air—is different. It’s like we’re all just a little more exposed in our places… the light and the air just a bit heavier or sharper.
I’m sure I’m projecting all kinds of stuff on that blade light. Cold mornings with whitecaps on the Egegik and Naknek Rivers come to mind, bone rattling bouncing in jet-skiffs, and on the Egegik, surging through rolling waves in a helpfully waterlogged wooden skiff. I remember waking up to wind chimes at our friend’s place at Coverden here in Southeast, knowing we had stayed a day too long, taking our old Olympic (another waterlogged craft) home in waves that actually moved the house so that the door would no longer close right. Half way across Stephens Passage, we lost all of our electrical accessories. I decided not to tell either wide-eyed Katrina (who must have wondered why I wasn’t using the wipers) or 260-lb, Jordan who kept marveling at the fact that the waves weren’t swamping the outboard.
So, yeah, I bring all kinds of baggage to a cold northerly morning that may shape into a beautiful day. Cedar greets the day a little differently.
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