A Walk

This big black creature straining against the leash, little hindered by the dreaded "Gentle Leader," is Frank. When he lies in the house with his hind legs gathered up beneath him and his head and forepaws turned to the side so that his long torso twists a little, he reminds me of a hound in a great hall. Or a dragon. This saggy beagle-mix with cloudy eyes who seems suddenly to have renewed her youth with the appearance of the leash, is Elly. Elly, being the puppy of my childhood pleadings and protegee of my training (now long forgotten), is my favorite. But I can't help but like Frank. And there is nothing pathetic or temperamental about him.

We make our way through the village--over the craters before the railroad crossing, past the huge garage belonging to a tiny house, by the cheerful Christmas lights adorning a mobile home owned by kind acquaintances. On the other side of the road, a shaggy appaloosa trots toward the fence, peering down at us before moving away. In the next pasture, a group of goats hails us with high voices and eager beards. We curve past the cemetery and two last house before the fields reign on both sides of the road. A wire hums overhead. Below and behind it stand corn stalks, snow smattered with skeletal tops broken and tangled, a remnant left from the cool summer and watery fall.

Finally leaving the oil and chip pavement, we step into the unplowed snow of a low maintenance road. "The Junk Road," we used to call it, when people used its obscurity as cover for pocking it's ditches with undecomposables. Now, through the care of my aunt who looks after much of the property lining the road, the banks retain their dignity, lifting seed heads over clean snow. Freed, the dog's scamper ahead. I clamp my hand over the clasp of a leash to still the rattling of a metal tag.

Quiet and space billow over us. A cardinal shoots through the air, a red arrow, sharp against the white and blue of the fields and the white and gray of the sky. To our left, the land slopes down to the Lamoine River, it's fields relieved here and there with slate traceries of living timber. The land slants up again beyond the river. The big sky holds a little moon, lowdown and pale like a dull coin. Everything feels open and exposed, and so do I, closing my eyes and lifting my face, alone on the strip of road in all that bare space. It is good to know, not just in my mind but also in my senses, that God's eyes can go right through me, down to the snow under my feet. It is good not to be able to hide.

The dogs come back. The gray timber ahead blurs in my reopened vision as my eyes struggle to adjust to the peculiar glare of overcast snow. I wait. Beside me, the dogs wait. I look at Frank. His nostrils flex;his brown eyes search the distance as his young energy holds itself in place. We are three creatures, stilling ourselves and watching, only I watch for more than they. And then they stir themselves--enough of waiting! And I walk again, feeling the jean fabric cold against my legs. A movement catches my eye near the hayfield, and I see a deer run through the clearing. Four more follow the first. They hesitate, their heads turn, and they bound away with long white tails swaying from side to side as their bodies bounce up into the air and down again. Frank seems to have it in his mind to follow them, but I am not worried. He is not very clever about such things, and will lose sight--and therefore interest--in them before any trouble happens.

I leash the dogs again near the end of the Junk Road. Elly seems to want to run, and, since such a rare wish in a 90 year old seems like it ought to be encouraged, I speed my numb legs to accommodate her. In the evening light, the cracks under the ditches' wind-sculpted overhangs of snow appear to be filled with watery arctic shadows. Frank's torso sways from side to side as he walks, in a sinuous motion rather like a snake . . . or a dragon, only snow, not smoke, adorns his amiable nose. Elly walks compactly, straight ahead. As we cross the tracks again with the home place in sight, the moon is no longer a tarnished dime, but a clean stone, white to glowing.

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And so, friend, you've seen a particularly special one of my walks. I'd love to see one of yours!