Following the Boy's Footsteps

February 26, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:   Wake up early for a dentist appointment at 10 am.   Have to work tonight, leave around 4:15, but around 1:15 I tell Moi that I feel like taking Mway out then.  “The Boy just took her for a walk,” she says, “But she’ll go out anytime.  Hear that?  A thump upstairs when you said the word ‘walk.’”  It is probably not Mway upstairs, for the next moment Mway comes creeping out the music room, but, because she appears while we are discussing a walk, it is the same effect anyway.

State of the Path:  There is a fresh white powder over everything, and beyond the chicken coop I start following several new sets of foot and paw prints.  Past the pig pen, Mway wanders over toward the orchard, and, though I hesitate because I know it won’t be the easiest walking, I consider taking the side path.  At first, though, I can’t see where it begins.  Finally I see a clean break in the weeds.  As I come closer I also see a set of the Boy’s foot prints in the path, which decides the issue for me.  For a while I avoid trudging through the unbroken snow by stepping in his prints, but just before the ant hill, they take a sudden detour through the weeds.  I continue on the unbroken path, my boots sweeping through powder then hitting a harder layer of snow beneath, which gives way slowly with each step.  Mway wanders among the weeds.  Back at the main path, I meet up again with the Boy’s prints.  Along the creek, just before the log and barrel jam, they diverge again, this time through bug land.

State of the Creek:   Snow lies on top of the rocks and logs, on top of the barrel, in the crooks of trees.  The water in the deepest parts of the creek is a fine slush, a gray porridge, dimpled by the wind; behind the log and barrel jam, I take my walking stick and write “HI” in the slush.  I take the side path along the skating pond; the golf ball is lost in the snow.

The Fetch:  As I’m coming up the path beyond the ridge around bug land, because I don’t see it underneath the snow, I trip over the ant hill.  Up at the clearing, Mway is waiting for me.  A handful of fetches, and she races with the stick in her mouth back to the house.  In the back yard, I see she’s standing near the driveway, and I don’t see the stick near her.   I tell her to find her stick, but she just looks at me.  Perturbed that she might have lost such a fine stick (which doubled as a second walking stick), I call her to the door, let her in, then start back down the sidewalk to see if she dropped it anywhere there.  I don’t see it, and pick up a snow shovel to shovel a little bit among the cars.  Almost immediately I spot the stick, lying between the two cars on top of the snow next to the garbage can.