Note Changes from Last Year

December 16, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:  I have to work today, at the job I usually do at night.  Moi has already taken Mway outside, but just out to the back yard.  I heard Mway barking, then saw her coming into the door behind Moi, carrying her stick into the house, which of course I don’t like her to do.  Right now she’s lying on the floor next to me in the office.  I suppose she is hoping I take her for a walk.

State of the Path:  Sure as soon as I get up, Mway gets up too, eyes me as I go to my room to put on walking clothes, follows me downstairs, and stands waiting at the door.  I had reread my first entry of this journal, since I want to see today what changes there are in the path and the creek since this time last year.  The first change is that the side path along the old orchard, partly because of the extremely dry weather this summer, has remained open all year, so Mway doesn’t have to step gingerly over a whole area of briars and goldenrod.  Because we haven’t yet had a big snow, the goldenrod, except for areas here and there, is still sticking up.  Also, I now have a pair of good boots, so I don’t have to be fussy about where I’m stepping, although today the water in the path is all iced up.

State of the Creek:  The log jam that used to be there is now gone, the smaller branches dispersed and the big log now resting a few feet from where it was against another big log on the opposite creek bank.  A honeysuckle has been chopped down, and more of the creek bank has given way, where Moi has stomped on it.  The plastic barrel the Boy has taken out of the water and thrown beside the path, and the piece of vinyl siding, once in the middle of the stream, has been washed downstream and is partially hidden underground.  And over the feed channel, there is now a plank, so I don’t have to stumble over the ditch to get to the crest of the skating pond.  The sumac tree that I mention as fallen over into the path is still where it was, but over the year I’ve simply made a path around it.

The Fetch:  As I walk along the ridge, I’m amazed to see all the puddles of ice around Moi’s pines.  On the other side of the ridge, the path is also iced up.  I step around the ice onto the thatches of tan grass surrounding it, pass the Russian olive that juts into the path.  When I come into the strawberry field, I see Mway sprinting up the path through the goldenrod into the clearing.  When I reach the clearing myself, she stops snooping at weeds and runs over to me, smiling and dancing in place.  On the first throw, I accidentally pitch the stick close to the evergreen Moi planted (another change), but fortunately Mway pulls it out of the weeds without wrecking the evergreen.  We make the circle, Mway dashing to the perimeter and back, barking and spinning at my feet.  As she runs, I notice her tail twitching, and I wonder if that’s because she moves her tail muscles or if that’s just an effect of her leg muscles moving.  A few fetches into the second round, she goes galloping past me with the stick in her mouth.  I yell “good enough.”  But she circles around me, and I find myself corralled by her circling.  “Oh, okay, put it down,” I say.  She fetches the stick a few more times.  We walk back through the sumacs, Mway passing me on the path as soon as it widens enough for her to do so, the stick in her mouth knocking against briar stems. The fresh air arouses in my head some words I’m thinking about putting into the introduction of my blog, words like “the underlying point is that the relation, the interplay of forces, between Nature and Art, object and subject, is more subtle and complicated than a mere dichotomy.”