It's all fun and squirrel chases until....

I did something stupid yesterday. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I do something mildly stupid every single day, those little idiocies I usually shrug off with a chuckle and a shake of my head. At home, when no one’s watching, I am the classic absent-minded professor, walking around with my head in the clouds, pouring boiling water into my bowl of cereal instead of into my tea mug because I’m distracted by life or composing a poem in my head or simply not awake yet.

Generally speaking, however, I don’t consciously choose to do something that might lead to harm for myself or my dog. Especially not my dog. Yesterday I did. If either one of us had come to harm, I would have had a hard time forgiving myself. There was a moment in time during which that thought occurred to me, and I reversed direction in time to keep us both safe. Whew.

Here’s how the drama played out:

I was excited to hike a new trail. As I was getting ready to head out in the morning, however, my son called, and I ended up leaving a half an hour or so later.

All was good, though. We found the trailhead, and as soon as we determined no one else was on the trail, I unhooked Maudie's leash and she was off chasing lizard after lizard after lizard (plus one bunny and one field mouse that was right under her nose). As always, she didn’t catch a thing.

Down the trail we went until we found the wash with a trickle of water running through. Maudie trotted along happily, splashing in and out of the water, sniffing everywhere, running ahead, coming back to me, living her best life. We walked about a mile and a half until we came to a drop off. We could have gone around it, but I looked at the time and the sun and determined it would be wise to head back, since we were already out later than I had anticipated.

So I turned back. Which was when we got lost. And then I got us more lost because I tried to cut over through the brush to an intersecting trail I thought for sure must be there. Critical rule of hiking: NEVER cut trail. No matter how tired you are, how lost you are. Never, ever leave an established trail.

We had walked east from the trailhead, then connected with the wash and turned south. The problem was, I hadn’t stopped to mark that connection in some way. On the way out, I had seen Maudie dash ahead, and as I stepped through some foliage, I laughed to see her already pushing her snoot into the gently flowing water. (She's always the first to find it.) We were in a deep canyon, and I was fascinated by the burrowing owl nests built into the vertical clay earth. Normally when we turn direction or step from one trail to another, I stop and look behind me, either noting a landmark or creating one by stacking rocks so that we can find our way back.

[Side note here: Maudie will always know the way back to the car. Also, Maudie will never leave my side. If I say, “We’re going this way,” she says, “Whatever you say, Mom. I’m with you no matter what.” And boy howdy, she means it.]

As I recall yesterday’s events, I believe what happened was this: On our way back, I expected to easily find the connecting trail, so I was paying more attention to Maudie’s silly antics and less attention than I should have to where we needed to take that path through the woods that led us up and out of the canyon. Then suddenly, Maudie was off like a shot, barking and yelping as I chased after her. She disappeared into a thickly wooded area, and my heart pounded as I shouted out the command that brings her to my side. I heard a rustle, held my breath, and there she was, panting but unscathed. Whatever she chased was bigger than her; she wasn’t chasing for fun. Whether it was a coyote, a bobcat, or whatever, I will never know, but I clipped on her leash and hurried up the wash to get away from the area, thus passing that all-important connecting trail.

I didn’t realize for at least a quarter of a mile that I had gone too far. Or had I? We turned and walked back. I still did not see the way out. Did I not go far enough? We turned around again and walked farther back along the trail—until a downed tree stopped us. That’s when I knew for sure I’d missed the connection. So once again we turned around, and once again we walked all the way back... as the sun rose higher in the sky, and the temperature inched from the 60's into the 70's.

And then I saw a path… or I thought it was a path. A coyote trail, perhaps. But maybe if we followed it….

I pushed through brush as I left the trail, tromping across dead leaves and branches—an absolutely stupid and dangerous thing to do when it’s rattlesnake season. Maudie, trooper that she is, plunged along beside me, undeterred by our having to bushwhack.

That’s when I found myself up against the canyon wall. My eyes followed the narrow coyote path up the side that wall and over. I looked at Maudie.

“We can do this,” I said.

Did I mention the canyon walls were composed of clay and shale? All around on the ground were large chunks of composite that had broken off and fallen into piles as rain and wind had deepened the canyon. Undeterred, I found a handhold and pulled myself up onto a narrow shelf. Maudie tried to follow, leaping up and falling back. I waited for her to try again, then grabbed her collar and hoisted her up beside me. Now if we could just…. But no. After twenty minutes of scrambling and near rock climbing, every handhold crumbling like a soft cookie in my hand, I stopped. Turned around. Leaned against the canyon wall. Took a breath.

And that was the moment—the moment I looked down and saw that we were 30 feet above the canyon floor, my feet barely braced on loose soil—when I realized how stupid I had been. What if I fell? At the very least, I’d be very, very dirty, dust in my eyes and—more critical—in my broken lungs. And if I were injured? What then? No one knew where I was. No one was expecting me later. How long would I have to wait for rescue? And what of Maudie? The sun was moving toward its zenith. I never intended to stay out this long. I’d brought a bottle of water for her and one for me, but we had consumed most of our water already.

With a sigh and a quiet apology to my dog, I slowly angled down into a sitting position and slid my way back down, getting covered with dirt in the process but making it safely back to the canyon floor, where I stood with shaking legs, petting my dog and apologizing again. We would walk south again as long as it took to find that narrow opening. A quarter mile later, we did.

Before we left the wash, I made Maudie lie down in the water, and I splashed her belly and chest with water. The temperature was in the mid-70’s by then, but we would have no shade for the long walk uphill back to the car. She tolerated the attention well, as if this were some new crazy game we were playing. Twenty minutes later—after six or ten more lizard chases on her part—we were back in the car and headed home.

When I say this dog would go anywhere with me, I really mean it. She trusts me to be a good leader, and I take that trust seriously. Yesterday I made a rash decision that could have resulted in dire consequences. I am determined not to be that stupid again, for her sake, and for mine.

Before I leave you with this honest confession (and a sweet photo of my ride-or-die companion), a note to the scolds out there: Please suppress your admonishments. Yes, I know the first rule of hiking is "always hike with a friend." I do. I hike with Miss Maudie. If I had to arrange hiking dates with my human friends, I would rarely get to hike. For the sake of my mental health, I'm willing to take the risk, but keep in mind that 99% of the time, I abide by the other rules--only hike on established and well-used trails, don't hike at night unless in a group, and always hike with more water and supplies than you need. I'm on it. I promise. Now good night.

Home safe, tired girl

 

A Few Lines Written About Lilacs

 

Very early one morning in this past week, Miss Maudie and I did a quiet walk in Bogart Regional Park, one of our favorite places to chase squirrels and dreams and lizards. A half mile in, we came upon a lilac in bloom. (See above photo, shot with an iPhone too early in the morning to capture the soft periwinkle color.)

These trees are portals for me. I cannot draw near them or smell their sweet scent without being transported back to 1983….

During the last summer of my marriage (when my husband was off in China and the kids and I felt like we were on a happy, relaxing vacation for two months), I attended a local writers group where I met a gentleman ten years my senior, a published poet and occasional college professor. I often called him "Prof," but will refer to him here as GK. We became casual friends as he shared his poetry and I shared my essays, and we talked about how our circumstances kept us from writing more. His constraint was that he had returned to Chino to live with and care for his dying mother. My constraint was my failing marriage and the anxiety that came with trying to find a way out of it. I was 29. I had never worked outside the home, had no education beyond a high school diploma and one college-level creative writing class. And I would have four kids to support, should I choose to leave.

One hot, humid summer evening while a thunderstorm was rumbling its way through the city, GK showed up at my door.

“I brought a poem,” he stated, by way of introduction. Then he seated himself in my living room and commenced reading William Wordsworth’s “A Few Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey” while I sat on the floor, enthralled. Any avid hiker will understand the inciting depiction of this poem. In it, the poet tells of returning to his birthplace after five years away, only to find the “beauteous forms” of nature—the hills, the trees, the streams, the blooms—are all exactly as he had remembered them. He had left during a time of revolution, a time of political upheaval and turmoil. But upon his return, nature remained static.

I loved it.

“I thought you would appreciate it,” GK said. “You have so much insight….” He went on to gently suggest that I consider studying literature and teaching as a means of supporting myself and my children. “You have so much to share,” he said.

In high school, I had been told that I wasn’t “college material.” But I took this man at his word. Months later, I found the means to separate myself from my husband and upon doing so, I enrolled as a fulltime college student.

The upheaval in my life was monumental, the stress nearly overwhelming. GK called, in the midst of it all, and I told him how I barely slept at night. At the time, he was staying in Cherry Valley, at a large property that overlooked Bogart Regional Park. He invited me to visit, to stay in the guest house and rest for a weekend if I could find a sitter for the kids. I did, then readily accepted—and was so exhausted when I arrived, he took one look at me and suggested I simply lie down and nap in the peace and quiet of the place. When I woke, the little room where I’d slept was filled with a delicious and unfamiliar fragrance. I sat up and discovered on the nightstand a glass jar filled with blossoms.

“They’re lilacs,” GK told me as he brought me a cup of tea. “They grow wild all around here.”

In my second year of college, I was introduced to the work of Walt Whitman. A favorite poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” expresses the poet’s grief at the loss of Abraham Lincoln. The poem always reminded me of GK’s encouragement and care, how with a single poem he had managed to convince me that I had what it took to earn a college degree. In my senior year, I wrote an expository essay on Whitman’s poem, and an English teacher admired my work enough to submit it for Ideas of Order, the literary journal of the university’s humanities department. It was accepted and subsequently published in the journal, a great honor. That accomplishment—for me—is one of my greatest successes as a writer.

I finished my undergrad work in four years, continued a fifth year to earn my teaching credential, and as soon as I began teaching, I began a graduate program in literature, earning my master’s degree two years later.

Amazing what a man can do with a few words and a handful of sweet-smelling flowers.

So when I see lilacs in bloom, I have to stop, as I did this week, Maudie panting at my side, to review the mileposts that marked my path as I moved forward on my journey to becoming the teacher, writer, poet, and, as much as I can be, authentic human that I am today.

With love and gratitude, Prof. You are ever in my heart.

In Memoriam: Renee Good and Alex Pretti

 

Renee Good and Alex Pretti now have Wikipedia pages about them. Well, not about them. About their deaths. Their pages are titled "The Killing of...." These are detailed accounts of what happened to each of them at the hands of ICE  and Border Patrol agents.

Those pages are not really about Good and Pretti, not their lives or their personalities, not what a great mom Good might have been or how Pretti was well-liked among the doctors and nurses he worked with. Just how they were shot, what brought about the circumstances and how they both died in the street as people on both sides of this domestic terror looked on.

Can you imagine? You get up one day just like any other average human in this country, go through your normal morning routine, whatever it may be--coffee, a shower, a kiss goodbye to your loved ones--and you exit home, never to return. By end of day, reporters, journalists, law enforcement agents, are scanning all your social media, swiping your photos and posting them--the ones that make you look great, the ones you wish had never gotten 'out there.' Your friends and co-workers and family members are being interviewed. "Tell us about...." While your body lies on a slab in the morgue. 

Within days, your name is being used in a slogan. "Be Pretti Good." It's all over social media. You are vilified by some, heroic to others.

Because they know you only by that one act. That one moment when you made a decision to participate instead of sitting on the sidelines. You didn't expect you were offering your life. You didn't expect you were giving up all your dreams for the future. You didn't expect it would break the hearts of those who love you. You just thought it might make, on that one day, a tiny difference.

What is the most heartbreaking for me about those Wikipedia pages is that these two individuals are defined there by what happened to them. Not by who they were. Not by their hopes and dreams and aspirations. Not by their day-to-day lives. Alex Pretti had a dog. Just like me. Renee Good loved to sing and write poetry. Just like me.

Whether you see them as villain or hero, they were, in truth, just like me. Just like you. I hope to heaven you see that. See them.

Pupdate

 

As is evident from the above photo, Miss Maudie was not at all happy with her vet appointment on Monday. We really just went for vaccinations, but the doc had to check her out first, and someone in the room (I’m not naming names, but there were only three of us in there) snapped at the good doctor who had been so gentle and careful with her. Oops. Thus the muzzle for everyone’s safety.

We did get those vaccinations, finally, but before that, the doc and I had a long chat about Maudie’s left hind leg. When she had her first vet appointment a year ago, I had the vet who saw us at the time x-ray her leg because I noticed that every third bounce in her gait was a skip—as if she had a peg leg. That vet (who no longer works at this hospital) examined the x-ray and found nothing.

This vet found something. (Shout out to Banning Veterinary Hospital in Banning, California, for keeping that digital x-ray as part of her chart so we could quickly pull it up and look at it together. Dr. Sobotka (who worked patiently with my spicey dog, bless him forever) stared at that x-ray for many long moments before finally saying, “I think I see the problem.”

He pointed to a shadow on her left femur that I would never have been able to discern, comparing it to the opposite leg.

“She has an old injury here,” he said. “Unfortunately, since it healed on its own, there’s nothing we can do to fix it.”

It’s okay. I didn’t cry. Well, not then, anyhow. And anyway, I already suspected as much, watching her run, knowing that she had clearly been kicked in the past. (See my post of December 17, 2025.) But I had to ask, so I did, if the injury would be consistent with someone kicking her. Yes, it could have been that, he told me, his voice as sad as my face probably looked.

Whatever. We already know that someone threw this dog away after they were cruel to it. Karma is a bitch. Not my dog, though. She’s a little sweetheart. (Even if the vet tech did have to enlist help from the back to hold her down so they could immunize her. Sheesh!)

I gave Maudie an old older lady name because it is my intention that we will grow old together. So we’re starting on that journey together, both having leg issues. Dr. Sobotka suggested massage for Maudie’s leg, encouraged our hiking (yay!) while warning that one day (like me) she would begin to have some pain from arthritis in that spot, at which point we can start her on some meds to help with that. We take one day at a time, and after every hike I will be scrutinizing her gait to make sure we don’t attempt anything too rigorous for her. We’ll be fine.

Oh, and one last suggestion from the doc (after I inquired): Maudie needs to lose weight. Yep. This little chowhound has gained eight pounds in one year. So much for using treats to help socialize her. We will cut back on everything, and I promised the doc that when he sees us next year, we’ll both be five pounds lighter (insert grimace here).

Now if I can just get my neighbor next door to stop giving Maudie bacon….

After the vet visit. Poor baby!

2026 Here We Go

 

I’m not one to make a big deal of the calendar flip—or actually, I guess, calendar renewal, as I pull one from the wall and replace it with another Black Cat calendar from Willow Creek Press. (Yes, I know I have a calendar on my phone and on my computer, and no, I don’t use them. I love standing in front of 30/31/28 blocks of time with a pen in my hand and organizing my days.)

Nor am I one to make New Year’s resolutions. (Previously, I had the same resolution every January 1^st: Turn my mattress over. But we don’t turn mattresses anymore. We rotate them. And we’re supposed to do that once a month. I try.) However, I do want to make a couple of changes in 2026, so I’m going to resolve to do so by putting them here in writing for all the world to see (or, probably, the thirty or so people who will actually read to the end of this post).

So here we go:

1. I resolve to post to my blog once a week every other week. Even in the year that I started the blog—which was, like, seventeen years ago, holy cow!—I didn’t post every week. But I was still teaching then. Life on the mountain was idyllic but busy, and I only had weekends to compose posts. Now I have more time at home, but I’m working on multiple writing projects, so I’m still busy. Anyway, doesn’t matter—I’m determined to post more often. There, I said it.

2. I resolve to play my guitar every day. Strange as it may seem, this one is way, way harder. Right now, I’m sitting at my computer desk in the dining room. My guitar is approximately seven feet away, sitting on a stand, ready to be picked up and played. But Jenny is sitting on top the writing desk by the window, gazing out to the street, watching the rain fall and hoping to see a bird hop onto the porch. If I pick up the guitar, she’ll leave me and head for the bedroom. So will Maudie, who is lying on the floor nearby. No matter how quietly I play, for some reason, the big wooden box with strings makes them anxious.

Also… and this is harder… I have lost a great deal of the tonal quality of my voice. “That shouldn’t matter!” I hear you protest. No really, it does matter. Singing now… is often heartbreaking. As we age, our voices lower and we lose the elasticity in our tissue, which means our vocal cords (which are actually flaps, not cords) cannot stretch the way they did when we were young. For me, this means that, while I may pick up my guitar and play an old tune, I may not be able to sing it.

Here's the truth: I learned to play the guitar when I was fifteen because singing brought me comfort at a time when I was clinically depressed. At that age, I was yet to realize how much of an emotional outlet writing can be. Singing was my form of self-expression, and when I was alone, which was often, I sang constantly. I learned to play not because I loved the guitar, but because I loved to sing. I still do. I sing to Jenny and Maya and Maudie constantly. But those are simple, silly songs. Not my old classics—“Sunrise, Sunset.” “El Shaddai.” “Danny Boy.” “Suzanne.” So many Peter, Paul, and Mary songs. So many Dylan songs. On rare occasions I will listen to the professional CD I made in 1982, and I am astounded at the quality of my voice back then. If I had known that I would one day lose it…. Sigh….

Therefore... I just haven’t been playing the little mahogany acoustic guitar I so happily purchased when I retired. I had so many hopes and dreams then…. Well, some of them have come to fruition. Maybe if I play my guitar every day and gently push those vocal flaps into doing some calisthenics, I will come a bit closer to what I was once capable of. (Calisthenics: from the Greek: kallos, meaning beauty and sthenos, meaning strength.) At the very least, I will regain the callouses on my fingers from chording.

That’s it. Just those two resolutions. So… meet me here again in two weeks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go play my guitar.