Find Where Moi Knocked Down Creek Bank

November 24, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  Woke up early today, before 8.  I still have to think about letting my gum heal.  Last night I finally had a cigarette around 8 pm, tried to puff on it gently.  Without a cigarette it’s hard for me to conceive of doing things of my own free will.  I have to work tonight.  Moi’s taking a bath – I already had one cigarette this morning; should I have another?  I’d like to take Mway for a walk this morning; at least I don’t have to think much about that.  Moi tells me just now she’s no where near ready to go for a walk – she has a lot to do, she says, she’ll take Mway out in the afternoon.  So it’s just Mway and me.

State of the Path:  I don’t hear any gun shots, so I decide to take my usual route along the path.  The back yard and upper parts of the field are cast in shadow.  Before the monkey vine portal, I note a white PVC pipe leaning against a black walnut – very conspicuous, and I’m sure I must have seen it before, but before now it and its location were phenomenon not fully established in my consciousness.  (It’s the same pipe, I’m sure, that years ago used to lie on the ground and into which Mway and Blue used to chase squirrels.)  I tug up on my pants, tug down on my shirt: it’s a little cold even in my father’s denim jacket.  In the one pocket is a golf ball, in the other a Swiss army knife; neither thing do I ever use.  After I round the bend at the hedgerow, the fiery ball of the sun glows straight through the center of the branches of the cedar.  A lot of bent brown stalks of goldenrod to brush or kick aside, tear away.  Down at the pin oaks, the wind is blowing a few of the brown leaves onto the ground; a low prickly branch catches onto the top of my wool cap.  I detach the cap, and further down the creek, at the next pin oak, the cap is snatched again.  I pull the cap down more over my ears.  I cross the plank and as I’m approaching the oaks along the creek there, on the other side of the creek a bunch of birds -- bluejays, mourning doves, or other -- fly up – I realize they’re flying up around a pine tree I never fully noticed before; I wonder if it’s the same species of pine as Moi’s.  The birds disappear quickly, but a male cardinal lingers in the branches close to the creek.  As I’m walking back toward the plank, suddenly I realize Mway’s walking behind me; it seems like she’s just suddenly materialized out of nowhere.

State of the Creek:  I think I find where Moi knocked down some of the creek bank.  As I’m looking around the bend of the creek where the log jam used to be, I see some fresh soil lying loosely along the water and an exposed root.

The Fetch:  I alternate throws toward the sumacs (making sure to avoid the little evergreen Moi planted there, marked by a white post) and back down the path.  I manage to keep Mway running pretty much through the goldenrod where it’s not tramped down too much.  She fetches the stick only a few times before she starts bringing it back without dropping it.  As she chomps on the stick, I tell her “put it down” several times, but she doesn’t seem to want to move to level 2.  Back at the house I tell Moi I think I spotted the place where she knocked down part of the creek bank; turns out I’m right.