spring

last time we drove away from our little blue house it was covered with snow and menacing icicles. we hadn't seen the ground in months and couldn't tell where the yard ended and flower beds began. but this morning the sun crawls right up past the 6:30 coldness and starts to get serious. so serious that by the time we sre finished with pancakes and duck watching the outside air feels like something we should be out in.

so we do what any normal folks would do in these circumstances. we toss the dog in the car with some backpacks and head up the side of the mountain we look at every day from our windows. the trail up our mountain is not, at least at the beginning, packed with wide open, dramatic vistas. there are no rivers or streams or waterfalls. it is just a trail that winds up around the side of the mountain through tall trees you can forget to look up at, especially if it's a while since you've been on a hike. you will be concentrating on the messages your body is sending. the backsides of your legs are sending angry messages about the steepness of the grade. your heart is snarling about how your weak and inefficient legs are making it work harder, which is not fair. your lungs are growling about how you will be coughing up blood before you get to the summit. but it's a good idea to look up at those trees from time to time. it will clear your head and shut up the angry voices of your body. because the smell of wet leaves and pine sap and air above where people live and the sound of the wind getting caught way up in the tops of those trees and, well, just the sight of a little bit of what is not brooklyn will leave your senses dumbstruck and the rest of the voices mumbling around in there will settle down, too.

the sweetie unleashes the small dog, which would make me nervous anywhere else, but he is a hunting animal and his first joy is in having a purpose. he hunts up rabbits and squirrel and deer and chipmunks all along the trail. he chases runaway sticks across great distances and is able to find his own stick among the many other littering the trail.

as we climb higher what was once patchy snow becomes deep enough to slow us down. the small dog takes circuitous routes to avoid the deeper snow but gives up when the whole trail is covered and just plunges in. it is strange to be wearing shorts in the snow. i think of visiting my grandparents in california, of going to see the largest trees i'd ever seen and how my sisters and i went from an 85 degree day in our garanimals shorts to the densest snow we'd ever seen lurking around under those massive redwoods. now, just as then, i feel like i am getting away with something, stomping through the woods and feeling snow slap against my skin.

when the snow gets too deep and slushy for the small dog, the sweetie carries him but we are a long way from the summit and although he is a small dog, he is not willing to
be carried peacefully. at every patch of unsnowed on ground he wriggles and squirms until the sweetie says enough. we have not reached the summit with the magnificent views down below to our little town. but that does not matter at all. we have walked from brown leaves right up into snow. we have been out in a part of the world you cannot see from the road.