Three trees and a dog

 

I park in the lot above the meadow in Bogart Park. It’s early and cool. As I step out of the truck, the quiet settles on me like the light embrace of a beloved friend.

This is how I know it’s October: The slight bite in the air. The scent of wood smoke that drifts down and hovers in the meadow. The tone of the leaves rustling; soft and lilting in mid-summer when the leaves are new and tender, it is a crisper sound now, as they dry and die and fall.

Maya alights from the truck eagerly, her nostrils twitching. She knows where we are, where the trail begins, and she heads that way at a trot before I’ve barely had time to close the door and hit the lock button.

Finding the trail, she pulls to the end of her twenty-foot leash and takes the rolling hills as if they are red-carpet flat, while I laugh, struggling to keep up as I tell her, “My, slow down, honey.” But she is thrilled to be out here, so I let her charge on, and my tempo increases as my boots kick up dust.

She slows when we reach the big hill. She doesn’t like this trail because she cannot see around the corners as we wind up and around on the climb, but she comes along beside me as I reassure her. Halfway up, she veers over to a single-track trail, a deer path that she has asked so many times to follow. Every other time, I have said no. Today I tell her, “Okay, My, let’s go your way,” and once again she is charging along. I gently slow her down; I have to watch her feet and mine for rattlesnakes, as it is still warm enough to see them out.

I know where this trail goes, and I know it will double the distance of our walk today. But it is a trail I have taken before with Sgt. Thomas Tibbs, and one I have loved—though not chosen—for several years.

We wind down to the far side of the hill, Maya surprised to find the trail opening up and skirting an expansive meadow. She glances often to our right where she can hear the penned sheep that sometimes graze here.

Then we come to the first tree.

 

A fire in the fall of 2016 burned much of this side of the hill down to rubble. Black ash is still visible in the soil along the trail. But look at these oak trees. Strong. Steadfast. Beautiful. How old is this one? How many fires have threatened it? Still it endures.

The last oak we pass before taking the steep trail back up toward the parking lot boasts a picnic table beneath it. Maya waits patiently as I snap a photo… and I imagine myself sitting down with a book or a notebook and a snack, whiling away a few hours in the shade… in the quiet… in the solitude.

 

Maya does that all-over dog shake—as Frost’s “little horse” did when the poet stopped to watch the snow fall in a similarly hushed and serene place.

I, too, have promises to keep.

So we tackle the last arduous climb, then pause briefly in the shade to catch our breath before heading back to the truck and civilization.

There is another way I mark the path into October, and that is by the shorter days, the diminishing light. At one time, October was my least favorite month. As the darkness came on, my spirits would flag, my anxiety rise, often leaving me depressed until January.

No more. The cure for darkness is light. So I will be out here as often as I can be, letting Maya charge up the trail (as long as it’s safe to do so), pushing myself to walk farther each time, to take the longer route, the steeper trail, to hear my heartbeat pounding, to know that I am still alive, still surviving, and will be when the light returns once again in spring.

The Darkest Evening of the Year

 

I wrote the following short piece for Fresh Ink, my writers club journal, but I decided to share it here because... it's the Solstice. And why not?

     In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Robert Frost describes a reverie he’s had on the night of the December solstice as he stops to watch the snow fall on a neighbor’s woods. It’s a lovely image—the white flakes falling, dusting the trees with winter icing. As his “little horse,” impatient to move on, shakes himself, his harness bells—sleigh bells—jingle. Apart from that, they are in a place so isolated, it’s quiet enough to hear the snow falling. (“The only other sound’s the sweep/of easy wind and downy flake.”)

We love this poem because, the Christmas season being what it is, with its frenetic activity of shopping, wrapping, preparing, cooking, and so forth, we relate to the final lines of the poem: “But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep.”

Until I memorized this poem long ago (along with a freshman English class I was teaching), I didn’t fully appreciate the line that comes before those final lines: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” It seems there is a certain reluctance here to push on, get those chores done, those promises kept, get out of the cold and into a warm bed. Why? What drives a man to sit in a sleigh and stare, when he has so much at home compelling him to get moving?

This is what I relate to, the dragging of his feet, the lure of the woods. As much as we would love to remember Frost as the kind, grandfatherly man who wrote of nature and farming, he was a profoundly troubled individual who possessed the requisite tortured soul of many poets. Consider this: His sister spent her last years in a mental institution, as did one of Frost’s daughters. One son died of cholera at the age of four; the other committed suicide when he was thirty-eight. Frost would outlive this son by twenty-three years, which is a long, long time to carry such grief.

Suffice it to say, the poet experienced his share of sadness and depression. What comforted him, we assume from his work, was the beauty and resiliency he observed in nature, the constancy and routine of the seasons’ change.

Many decades ago, when I had recently emerged, battle weary and deeply depressed, from the worst year of my life, two friends stopped by my house and nearly dragged me out to hike with them. I had no hiking boots, only sneakers. It was January, and while the golden California sun was shining, it had snowed in the mountains the night before—which is where they insisted on taking me, up to the nearest mountain, Mt. Baldy, for a long walk up a winding fire road that eventually led to a crystal-clear view of the valley below.

The snow was the brightest white I had ever seen. The trees, warmed by the sun, gave off an aromatic scent of pine you will never find in a cleaning product or deodorizer. And after miles of hiking, endorphins flooding my brain, I was hooked. Here was solace. Here was comfort. The sights, the smells, these two goofball friends who told stories and laughed and kept me moving until I was (finally!) warm, gave me the gift of hiking to achieve balance and perspective, to be reminded that, as nature endures, so will I. The hours we spent were more memorable than I can describe, and I will be grateful for it through the rest of my days.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” During the holiday season, this line will come to me at the oddest times—standing in line at Target, sitting on the floor wrapping gifts, breathing deeply in heavy traffic as I try to remain calm and get to my destination alive. They will draw me out, those woods, and offer me quiet moments of solitary, serene walking in between the frenzied times. And I will remember Frost and his work with much gratitude.

Sunday

The Pasture, by Robert Frost 

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring

I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf

That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,

It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

This path leads deep into the forest. Care to join me? 

I chose this hike today for two reasons. The first—the best—is that it rained last night, and I love what happens to the woods when they are saturated, all the colors and contrasts, the rich scents and quiet drippings from the tall trees. The second reason isn’t nearly so nice; this is a hike I rarely do because Thomas, my favorite hiking buddy, doesn’t like it. No doubt he has gotten more than a whiff or two of the wild things that roam here, and he is always on high alert and anxious when we come. Alas, I resignedly accepted the news from the vet on Friday that Thom will no longer go on walk-abouts with me. He has severe arthritis in his shoulder, poor old man, so he has been placed in retirement, limited to short walks but not limited at all in the amount of love and affection (and treats) he will continue to receive.

If it’s 40° when you set out, taking a photograph—even with your phone—requires removing hands from pockets, the glove from your right hand, and the phone from your left pocket. Take the shot, then repeat the process in reverse. We may do this a few dozen times on this walk. Never, though, get so caught up in getting the right shot that you cease to be vigilant. Your eyes must always keep scanning for movement, for the deer or the bobcat or the bear or the coyote… or the mountain lion you’ve heard tell lives here but have never seen.

Have you noticed, as we walk deeper into the woods, that the rush of traffic on the freeway has died away? The soft crunch of our footfalls on the damp, leaf-strewn earth is all we hear. Wait—that quick, muted thudding we hear as we stop for another photo is… something. Deer? Probably. Let’s assume so, and keep walking.

Oh! Did you see that? If you looked up in time, you saw the redtail hawk gliding past directly over our heads. She carried nesting material in her beak. Is it time? Already? It’s time. This is what winter is for. Getting ready for spring.

A brightly colored male towhee hops around on a branch, eyeing us suspiciously without taking flight, flicking his tail dismissively. “I am not afraid of you, wingless creatures!”

You can see now how the rust color of the wild buckwheat looks almost crimson with its saturation of rain water, and the moss on the side of that tree trunk is the best color of “forest” green.

How do woodpeckers make such perfectly round holes in the trees? It's another one of those mysteries of Nature that makes us stop in our tracks in amazement.

My goodness—Have we walked a mile already? I have hot soup waiting at home. Let’s turn around now and walk back.

 

Wild Geese and Cairn Builders

Lordy, I love that photo. Sometimes the sky just stops me in my tracks. It's impossible to capture the full beauty of the sweeping vistas I often see when walking Sgt. Thomas Tibbs, but on this walk, when we spotted this beautiful "horsetail" cloud, I had to stop and give it a try. We had already had a few adventures on our walk (explanation to follow), and we were almost back to the truck, but Thomas was patient, as he always is, when I dropped his leash and gave him the "wait" command. Oh, how glad I am I snapped the photo. It nicely commemorates a truly wonderful walk.

One week before, I had taken my dear friend Liz on somewhat of a wild goose chase--which turned out to be quite literal, in the end--out to Banning, our neighboring town. We didn't find what we were looking for, so on the way back to her car, I turned the Subaru up a remote dirt road to show her one of my favorite places overlooking Bogart Park in Cherry Valley. As we stood on the ridge-line gazing at the sky, she said, "What's that?" We both looked to the south and saw a cluster of something in the air. As it drew nearer, we could make out that it was a small flock of wild geese. "Twenty-two," Liz counted. "But they're not flying in formation."

No, they were not. They were doing something I've never seen wild geese do before; they were riding a thermal, catching the warm air rising from the canyon wall we stood upon and letting it lift their bodies up and around in slow circles. I've seen hawks do this a thousand times. I have never had the opportunity--the downright blessing--to watch a flock of geese do the same, each moving in and out from each other like graceful dancers in a tightly choreographed routine. The sight was astounding. And I had left my phone in the car. So no photo, no video. I could have tried to run back, but Liz and I decided we would just seize the moment and watch. We stood there, nearly silent, for a quarter of an hour, feeling the sun on our faces, watching the spectacular show, each grateful to witness the once-in-a-lifetime show.

It rained in the ensuing week. On the first dry day, I took Thomas out to one of our favorite hiking spots. On that day, for some reason known only to him, he decided to leave the wide dirt road and follow a coyote trail. Since I knew exactly where we were in relationship to the road and we weren't in dense brush, I let him, just following along, letting him meander as he stopped from time to time to sniff. As we came over a hill into an open space, this is what we saw:

Can you see the small white mound on the left side of the picture? I had to wonder what it was; we were far from the road and following a pretty faint trail. Turns out, it was a cairn.

Well, now. Someone else had come this way (unless the coyotes are now using cairns to message each other in some way--I don't know; they're pretty smart).

As we strolled, we saw another cairn--

and another.

I smiled to think that someone else had wandered off the beaten path ("Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" is what you're thinking, no?), probably with a dog or two, and had stopped, potentially to let the dogs run free for a moment, and had used the time to make his or her mark, to place a few stones atop one another to indicate "I was here."

While I try always to "leave no trace," I didn't mind this sort of thing. In some way, it warmed and comforted me to know another human had roamed these same quiet hills, no doubt in contemplation, as I was, of all the beauty.

We walked on. I led Thomas to a fire road that I knew would take us back to the main road to follow back to the truck. We strolled along, Thom trotting along quickly now in anticipation of home and treats. Dense chaparral lined the road on either side of us. Around a bend we went, and exactly where the two roads intersected stood a lovely lady coyote.

She looked healthy, with a gorgeous coat and round belly. And she stood in our path huffing quietly--not quite a bark; more of a "hubba hubba." It is, after all, coyote mating season, and, well, Thomas is one good-looking guy. Interestingly, he didn't seem fearful of her at all, just a bit wary.

We stood. What to do? She was blocking the road. So I took out my phone. Which is when she stepped off the trail. I didn't want to frighten her (or myself) by making any quick movements, so we inched along until we could see her again, standing in the wild grass, watching. One picture. Two. Three. And then she was gone.

I wished her luck in finding a mate with good genes (and a good sense of humor, number one on my own list of 'good traits in a man'). And then we headed toward the truck, stopping one last time to take the photo of the horsetail cloud.

Recipe for a Sunday morning

When Robert Frost began his poem "Directive" with this line, "Back out of all this now too much for us," he did so as preface to asking his readers to separate themselves from a world that Yeats would have characterized as being "full of weeping." As I've discussed previously on this site, Frost's "Directive" is a journey, in a sense, toward peace, gotten at by employing a childlike imagination.

Exactly. That is exactly how I felt this morning. I needed to separate myself for a time from news reports, from social media... and I needed to seek quiet and beauty. When I start out, and I encounter a place that looks like this:

my childlike imagination is awakened. Where do those roads go? What will we find? What will we see? And suddenly I feel myself begin to breathe deeply, to think about possibilities that are less negative, more ripe with beauty.

For today, my recipe was a simple one: Start with one good dog. Add a pack of water, snacks, emergency kit (just in case--always) and binoculars. Use a sturdy pair of hiking boots to begin a slow, methodical blending of yourself with the scenery. That's it.

Having Thomas with me today was essential because he often alerts me to things I can't hear or see. When we'd made the five-minute drive down the road to where the dirt roads pictured above are accessible, I got out and began my preparations--cap, sunglasses, pack--and immediately saw a small hawk, a kestrel. I did not take this picture, but this is what one looks like:

If I'd been in possession of my Pentax camera with the telephoto lens, I'm sure I could've gotten a shot just like this. Kidding, but I was able to get pretty close watching him through the binoculars, and my guy looked like this guy--only much fatter. When he became annoyed with my creeping ever closer (and who wouldn't), he coasted away with a couple of wing flaps. I then returned to the business of getting Thomas out of the truck, and as soon as he hit the ground, he saw a bird. Far off in the pasture we'd parked next to, he'd seen movement, and he watched. I, of course, said, "What the heck are you lookin' at? I don't see anything," as I usually do, but swung the binocs up to have a gaze--and immediately spotted a roadrunner. No, not the cartoon guy, this guy:

Well, not exactly this guy, but his cousin who looks exactly like him. There is something about roadrunners that is absolutely comical. They're very large birds; this guy was bigger than the kestrel by far. But, I mean, look at his tiny wings and his way-too-long tail feathers and his goofy, adolescent boy hairstyle (or, er, featherstyle). They run. Stop. Run. Stop. Run. Stop. as they alternately look for lizards and check for predators. I watched my goofy guy until Thomas pressed against my leg, reminding me that we were about to wander off into the countryside.

We didn't walk far before we came upon a puddle still left over from last weekend's rainstorms. It was cold last night, and the ice on this one was still melting, glinting beautifully in the morning sun. In the mud next to the large puddle we saw some tracks:

To give you some perspective on size, here's my size 6 boot next to one:

I was not surprised, then when we rounded a bend in the road and saw, three hundred yards or so in the distance, the biggest damn coyote I think I've ever seen. Seriously. This guy was the size of a Mexican gray wolf. And as he began to slowly slink off to the west, he did that characteristic coyote look back over his shoulder like a thug who's been caught loitering before committing a crime, and he looks back as if to say, "Fine, I'll leave, but I'll be back when you're not around, pal." He was beautiful, though.

So was the huge old redtail hawk we saw next. The old man was sitting in the top of a dead oak tree, basking in the rising sun. I got a good look with the binoculars before he swooped away. That's how I could tell his age. Old hawks are like old cars--a bit faded and banged up, with a few dents and scratches here and there. But his wings were still strong and steady, so he's got a couple more years of vermin hunting ahead of him.

It's been crazy-windy here lately, and at one point the road was completely blocked by tumbleweeds, so I took a minute to clear a path through. I only mention this brief pause in our adventure to applaud the behavior of this good dog, who knows that when his leash is dropped he is on "Wait" until I pick it up again, so he sat himself down and enjoyed the warmth of the sun while I worked (and got stickered up a bit, but that's ok; it'll make the going easier for the next guy).

I have always loved Frost's sense of taking his reader with him--on a journey of the imagination or just out "to clean the pasture spring." And you should know, Dear reader, that when I'm out walking on a day like today with my trusty bird-spotter and best friend, I am always taking you with me, wishing you were along for the walk with us. We might not even speak other than to exchange a few words about direction, or to point out to the other some interesting sight off in the distance. I am always mindful of you there, in my heart. So let me leave you with a tiny gift brought to mind by today's journey:

The Pasture

by Robert Frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long.--You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long.--You come too.

This is why I teach poetry to high school students

Because I can teach all the literary devices I want them to learn throughout the year by using poems for examples:

Metaphor in "Dreams" by Langston Hughes:

"For if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."

Repetition in the same poem:

"Hold fast to dreams... Hold fast to dreams...."

Theme (with perhaps a life lesson thrown in):

What is the poet saying here? Don't let go of your dreams or you become, in a sense, crippled, unable to move forward. Is there something important that you want to do in your life? Whatever it is, you can do it. The path to your goal may not proceed in a straight line, but keep that end destination in your sights; you'll get there. How did the poet know this? He lived it.

A more challenging theme in a different poem by Langston Hughes:

"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

Point of view and tone in "Bike Ride with Older Boys" by Laura Kasischke.

(I do this one early in the year with my freshmen because I want them to learn that reading a poem is sometimes like unlocking a small cupboard door to find a bit of truth just sitting on the shelf, waiting to be discovered, and to show them that in poetry, titles can be an essential key.)

The first line of the poem is this: "The one I didn't go on."

The next two lines are: "I was thirteen/and they were older."

In this poem I love "My afternoons/were made of time and vinyl" and "I have been given a little gift." We don't know what the gift is until we're nearly finished reading the poem. Some students are mystified by the lines "When I/stand up again, there are bits of glass and gravel/ground into my knees." They ask hesitantly, "What happened? Did she fall off the bike?" Others, when the impact of the narrative hits them, say, "ohhhh" in soft tones, and I know they are moved by it, perhaps even warned by it.

(As an aside here, that 'title as key' concept can also be seen in "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House" by Billy Collins, which never references a gun at all in the poem, but does reference a dog that barks incessantly.)

Some poems should just be fun, so we do "Summer" by Walter Dean Myers, but they're still learning assonance, alliteration and internal rhyme as we go:

"Bugs buzzin from cousin to cousin/juices dripping/running and ripping" and

"Lazy days, daisies lay/beaming and dreaming...."

And there must be classics because, well, if you don't know Frost, you're not American.

"Whose woods these are, I think I know."

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood."

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

Billy Collins is my hero, of course, and sometimes it's fun, especially with high school students, to discuss extended metaphor by reading "Schoolsville."

("Their grades are sewn into their clothes/like references to Hawthorne./The A's stroll along with other A's./The D's honk whenever they pass another D.")

And speaking of classics, we read "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" so that we can discuss the concept of carpe diem, but I introduce it to them by showing them the scene from the movie Dead Poets Society in which Robin Williams as Mr. Keating has one of his new students read the poem.

I follow that by teaching them "O Captain! My Captain!" (because, in my humble opinion, Whitman was the most courageous American poet of his time), and then we watch the heartbreaking scene in Dead Poets in which Keating's students stand upon their desks in deference and respect, each one proclaiming "O captain my captain!"

I have shared tears with some students after such a lesson.

I allow Emily Dickinson to teach them that "hope is the thing with feathers" and also that "I'm nobody" can be a strong statement of defiance for an introvert. 

I teach them "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson toward the end of the school year because I want them to understand how subtle poets can be:

"He was a gentleman from sole to crown/clean favored and imperially slim," but mostly because I want them to fully understand what isolation can do to people, how desperate and alone it can render someone who feels incapable of making a human connection with anyone else. I tell them to consider the folks around them... and who might be suffering despite walking among them as if everything is fine. At fourteen and fifteen, they are still challenged to find empathy and compassion. ("If he killed himself, he's stupid. That's just stupid.") But we work on it. We work on it.

Generally we end the year with Frost's declaration that "Nothing gold can stay" because I want to remind them about that whole "seize the day" attitude and that, while they are perfect—just as they are—life is going to lob some considerably large stones at them, which may alter them. But that's ok. Because "hope springs eternal."

Before I sleep

Robert Frost wrote a poem much beloved of Nature-philes and English teachers: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” You may recall it from your school days—“Whose woods these are, I think I know….” The narrator sits in a sleigh far from home, watching his neighbor’s woods fill up with snow. The little horse pulling the sleigh “gives his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake,” and we can almost hear the solitary jingle of those sleigh bells in the silent night. “The only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.”

Many a time I’ve stood in the forest on a dark snowy night, listening to nothing else but the whispered soughing of the wind in the trees and the slight padding, just below our conscious hearing, of snowflakes piling up. The experience, to the uninitiated, might seem fraught with loneliness. But… “the woods are lovely, dark and deep….”

Frost was not happy in his life of tending a farm to survive financially when all he really wanted to do was read literature and write great poems. I understand. Another season, another potato crop.... Eventually, though, the poet came to balance his time spent in subsistence and creativity and in fact to incorporate his passion for Nature and the outdoors with the workings of the pen.

What thought was in his mind on that night, “the darkest evening of the year,” as he sat watching the snow fall? Was he tossing around the beginnings of a new poem as he watched the trees become top heavy with snow, contemplating the image of birches, and how, when loaded with ice, they bend, “like girls … that throw their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun”? Or did he muse upon the idea that “promises” kept him from what he would really like to do if unfettered? Or did he simply celebrate, finally, the passing of the solstice, as I will in 22 days, knowing that more light each day means more time outdoors?

“The woods are lovely….” Thankfully, in these days of disappearing sunlight, the trees retain their statuesque beauty. Indeed, that beauty is only enhanced when draped with the diamonds of ice crystals or robed in a soft pelt of powder snow. I, too, have promises to keep, and will attend to them… after a walk in the woods. If only I had the horse and sleigh….