It Doesn't Matter It's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

January 18, 2010.  Monday.

Situation:  A state holiday today, a paid vacation day for many in the corporate world, an unpaid vacation day for me. It’s around 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and I’m sitting at the computer, when Moi comes out of the bedroom from her nap and asks me, “You going to take Nitwit for a walk?”  She looks down at Mway, who finally lumbers out of the room and creeps toward me for a pat on the head, then slowly begins pacing back at forth between the bedroom and the office, Squeak in a corner crouching and looking on.

State of the Path:  The snow is finally all gone, and I can hear my boots sucking in the mud as I walk along.  It is a rich black mud, especially around the wigwams where the maple leaves have rotted into the soil.   In the walled garden, strewn all around, are unburnt boxes and plastic sheet coverings.  As I walk along the path, I try to step to the side as much as possible to tramp down weeds, not only to avoid the mud, but also to widen the path, pretty much a hopeless task, but one that I try to carry out anyway.  I feel the bigger weeds and briars pricking my snow suit as I tramp along.  Mway follows at my footsteps as I take the side path along the old orchard and take note of an old, but colorful, mailbox lying on the ground  (just beyond it is the central tree of the old orchard with the Boy’s fort in it, falling down now these days, and to the right of the fort are a group of TV sets, which the Boy once used for playing paintball).  As I pass along the back hedge row, I note spots where someday I’ll have to bring clippers along with me to trim back blackberry brambles and multiflora briars if I want to keep this side path open all year.  Mway falls even further behind as we round the cedar and I begin tramping through the area of the fallen down briars and goldenrod.  I see that my stepping through here on occasion has not really traced out much of a path, and Mway has to step cautiously so as not get a briar in her paw.  She overtakes me, though, as I pass the wigwams and is already down at the creek when I reach it.  The seep in bug land is again wet.  I see a few puddles of water in the high grasses.  Mway disappears from my sight as I walk along the creek, but she reappears as I take the side path along the skating pond.  There is ice in the feed channel, but I don’t trust to step on it.   I’m able instead to scuff out some foot holds in the mud to get across it with relative ease.  As we walk across the crest of the pond, Mway overtakes me to run up onto the ridge, to check out any ground hog or other holes that are up there.  I note how much the sumac trees growing on the ridge have fallen over this winter and are lying across the feed channel and stick into the path.  Along bug land too, in the area of the many red willow shrubs, there is one red willow that has fallen over into the path also.  I have been stepping over this for the past few weeks now.

State of the Creek:  The ice is gone from the creek.  It is running high and swiftly, a greenish gray color, and it is noisy again today.  There is one block of ice left at one of the bends of the creek, which I’m able to move about in the water as I poke at it with my walking stick.   Bits of white foam (I call it cow piss foam) appear here and there in the roots of trees sticking out into the creek

The Fetch:  Mwayla is already waiting for me up at the clearing as I trudge up through the field to throw stick with her there.  I’m wondering how many times today she will fetch the stick.  I throw it once toward the exit of the clearing.  She brings it back.  I throw it again toward the electric pole.  She goes after it, and just like a few days ago, runs past me with the stick in her mouth to go back to the house.  As I’m entering the back yard, she’s already at the back porch, being let into the house by Moi.  Inside, I mention to Moi that Mway has only been fetching the stick twice with me in the afternoons.  “She goes after the stick a lot more with me in the mornings,” she says, then in a teasing high-pitch voice, “Is Mway being lazy?  Lazy?”