Two Trees

On occasion I have seen Duncan shy away from people. I have seen him shy away from water. Loud noises startle him. He's tried desperately to avoid riding in the car. But I have never seen him avoid a tree. Until this afternoon. Trees are to Duncan as call girls are to Charlie Sheen: long, tall, slender sticks that are physically impossible not to approach and sniff. We have spent hours wandering aimlessly, without any sense of order or convenience, from tree to tree so that Duncan can check his messages and possibly leave a few of his own. I have stood back and watched him bark at squirrels and birds and try with great effort and very little actual pay-off to climb the trunks to get at them. The Three Sisters, the big cottonwoods which stand guard at the edge of the property, are covered in thin, undulating highways of busy ants, which wrap and wind around the trunks, swarm at their bases and carry bits of bug and leaf and whatever other scrap they can back to their colony. Duncan hasn't taken the slightest notice of them, even when he leans up against the bark and finds himself covered in tiny, wriggling black bodies which I have to brush away, pull out of the long hair of his tail and pat from his pink belly.

And yet today, on the far side of the baseball diamonds, he stopped in front of a tree we've passed a thousand times, a rather scrawny Aspen that hasn't quite come into it's own yet, lowered his head, raised his hackles and cowered at it's roots. I hadn't been paying attention, merely walking ahead, when I felt the drag on the leash and turned back to see him paralyzed with fear. "Did you find something?" I asked and stepped up beside him, head tilted back to examine the tree. The branches are still quite thin and what leaves it has are sparse and I imagine it's only been in the ground a few years, not much more than a sapling. It offers absolutely no shade and I can't imagine any creature would attempt to conceal themselves in its branches. There was nothing to see in it, not a bird not a squirrel, not even a ladybug. And yet Duncan would not move. The only other time I'd ever seen him act this way was at The Breakers when we'd first adopted him. Every afternoon on our walks we passed below a second floor patio that stopped Dunc dead in his tracks, raised his puppy hackles and almost always required me to pick him up and carry him a good ways down the walk. I never knew what was there that frightened him and to be honest, I never quite cared to imagine it. The last thing I needed to know was that Jeffrey Dahmer had taken to cooking dinner a few buildings down from me.

It was only with great coaxing and a few of Grandma Lucy's pumpkin treats that I was able to pull him away, and even after we'd moved down the sidewalk he turned and looked back over his shoulder as though some heap powerful magic had been placed on that tree.

No sooner had we left the Devil Tree behind than Duncan became enamored of another one, not for its cool shade or the sweet smell of its leaves but for the squirrel he chased up into it. Duncan milled around the trunk keeping his eye on the thing while I did what I always do (but shhhh, you can't tell anyone and you can never, ever ask me to do it at dinner parties), my squirrel impersonation. I don't know how I figured it out but somehow I learned all the dirtiest, meanest things you can say to a squirrel, things about his mother, about where he stores his nuts, the size of the cheeks on his ol' lady. Nothing gets them riled up quite like my chitter. Duncan's ears perk up and we've actually had squirrels come barreling down trees at us, their fur standing on end and their tails doing this violent jerky twitch-thing, which I'm sure is much worse than flipping someone off. A couple of times I've had to pull Duncan away for fear that we're about to be jumped. But not this little fella. He was as cute as can be, very inquisitive and didn't seem to mind my trash talk. He simply peered over his branch at us and watched Duncan smile and slobber all over himself, his own tail wagging in merriment, like something out of Disney.

Stationary Path

Before I leave, almost without noticing,
before I cross the road and head toward
what I have intentionally postponed—

Let me stop to say a blessing for these woods:
for crows barking and squirrels scampering,
for trees and fungus and multi-colored leaves,

for the way sunlight laces with shadows
through each branch and leaf of tree,
for these paths that take me in,
for these paths that lead me out
(A Blessing for the Woods, Michael S. Glaser)

There are three large trees that grow on the edge of the property between the fence and the street. They are enormous things, perhaps six feet in diameter at the bottom of their gnarled trunks. Quite often Duncan stops at the foot of each and cranes his neck up to catch a glimpse of the countless squirrels which play and lounge and live there. Although they are still naked on top, last week's cold and snow spurred some growth and I don't think it'll be long before the sidewalk and street are bathed in their heavy shade.

It's long been a fantasy of mine to not only live in a tree but to somehow build a village at the top of some mighty wood, like something out of Tolkein or Star Wars. As a child I spent hours reclining under the tall trees on the campus of Idaho State University envisioning tiny people with their tiny roads built across wide boughs and branches winding their way up to the suburban quiet on the edge of the furthest and highest of leaves.

Last Summer Duncan and I lounged in the long grass at their trunks and I lost myself gazing up at them, all those fantasies and memories rushing through my imagination again. Today we stopped for the first time since then. Duncan tends to grow restless if we stop in one place too long, ever eager to sniff and lay claim to new territory, but at the base of a tree he is content, his eyes sweeping every nook and cranny for real and imagined squirrels. I knelt down next to the thick elephant skin bark and studied the ants crawling across the gouged surface, following the lines and ridges like cars traversing the mountain and valley roadways. They are magnificent things, these trees. Following their paths is almost as good as walking, like moving without moving, flying over vast and intricate landscapes from the safety of the ground.

Sweetness

Sometimes Duncan leads me places and is able to show me exactly what I need to wash the day away and find myself once again. Late last Summer, as the students returned to school and I worked long, seemingly endless and thankless hours, he took me to the lake and led me to the last of the sunflowers. In October, with the wind howling through the trees, we chased leaves across the dark grass at the park, stirring up their music with our steps and tossing them into their air to rain down on our heads. In December he pulled me through the ankle-deep snow, which was windblown and hard and made a most satisfying crunch as it held my weight for a moment and then caved in, swallowing my booted feet. On those cold, clear nights with Orion standing tall in the southern sky, he insisted I throw myself into it and roll across it, burying my face until I could not breath and and my way was so lost the only place to go was back to me. My dog is wise beyond explanation, or perhaps he only seems wise because I'm willing to listen and treat him as my friend, not as something I own or can call mine. He knows what I need, can make offerings, however simple, which lighten my spirit and center me again.

Today I returned the favor.

He was anxious to get outside from the moment I got home and could hardly stand still long enough to be leashed. He practically dragged me down the yard to the corner where we always stand under his tree as we wait for the traffic on Bowles to pass. He picks the direction and I follow, but today he didn't know which way to go and so we meandered back and forth for a bit and when it became obvious that neither knew where we were headed, I took the lead. We walked down the long sidewalk toward the library, past the soccer and lacrosse players, past the skate park, which always smells of cigarettes and makes me a little nervous. At the corner we skirted the edge of the tall, dead willows, a giant net of sorts, which caught the windblown refuse of winter: empty and crushed water bottles, a t-shirt, bags from the Carl's Jr. just down the street, a stray sock or two. We walked up the hill on the backside of the park and when I dropped the leash and laid down in the grass overlooking the lake, Duncan seemed confused, but then turned and saw the light, startlingly bright, dancing across the water, saw the dark shapes of the mallards, their heads more purple than green, swimming along the edge of the shore. Someone guided a kite above us, and though the hillside was warm and calm, the kite, a huge thing, as big and colorful as a costume from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, whipped back and forth, caught in a nearly violent wind, careened low to the ground and then pulled up at the last second only to climb higher than before.

And as I had trusted him months ago in the snow, Duncan trusted me and followed my lead. He threw himself to the ground and rolled right over me until I wrapped my arms around him and we wrestled, sliding down the hill, laughing and snorting and giving the ducks something to stare at. It seemed exactly what he needed, like something he'd forgotten and rediscovered, a sweetness his life had been without for too long.

Spring

Today is the day when bold kites fly,
When cumulus clouds roar across the sky.
When robins return, when children cheer,
When light rain beckons spring to appear.

Today is the day when daffodils bloom,
Which children pick to fill the room,
Today is the day when grasses green,
When leaves burst forth for spring to be seen.
(Spring, Robert McCracken)

What a glorious blue sky and what mighty winds blow across it. What joy in the laughter of the children as they run on the soccer pitch, their red and blue jerseys catching the gusts, ballooning this way then that. When I was young, on gusty afternoons like this, I imagined I needed only to stretch my arms out wide enough and jump at an exact moment to be lifted and carried across the yard, then set back down, perhaps on my belly, on the newly dried earth.

There are the twigs, pulled from the trees and sent flying all around, carried by the wind, but also by Duncan, who is surely impressed with their numbers. He chases them and tackles them before they slide across the sidewalk, chews them a few moments until they are nice wet then spots the next one, and then the one after that, each new discovery more precious than the last. And then, finally, with such abundance all around him has no choice but to throw himself into the grass and roll and roll, his hair pulling it up until he is covered in a dusting of green and fading yellow.

And the trees, magnets to the wind, could not seem taller and fuller in their nudity. They have celebrated the day, baked in warm light until exploding with buds––mere balls, tiny and red, almost brown, but swelling and growing, making promises they have no choice but to keep. These trees out front, along my sidewalk, are old and have seen this before, but they whisper their excitement and the wind carries it across the fields, across the street, over each blade of grass, sharing it with all who will listen. "This is Spring," they say. Finally at last they say it. "Spring has come."

So Much Depends Upon

So much depends
upon
the red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
(The Red Wheel Barrow William Carlos Williams)

The week was lived for this night's sunset, caught as it was around and between the big boughs of the tree, Duncan's Tree. It wasn't just the gold on the clouds against the last of the day's blue, or even the darkness of the tree seen from behind––not quite a tree any more, but the shape of one, its memory––but the two of them together, happening at once, a perception of action and inaction. That was why the week was so long and at times unendurable because the universe, behaving as the universe does more often than we'd like to admit, was saving this, knowing that as Duncan and I returned home, tired and chilled and looking forward to the quiet of the weekend, that I would glance––so accidentally––in the direction of the mountains for one last glimpse of the day and catch my breath. The reason for the week, painted against the sky for everyone to see, so difficult but also easy. Like a favor. Or a blessing.

King of the Hill

It's a Duncacentric world. Seems everywhere we walk there are places that the boy just lays claim to.


Like the tree just outside the gates. It's covered in ants and only occasionally yields a squirrel, but he could stand here for days.



Or Duncan's Mound at the park, where he roots around, smelling God only know what.



Or Duncan's Glen, the natural bowl at the corner of the property where he accidentally taught himself to fly this afternoon.



No matter where we take him, though, he's the King of the Hill.

It didn't bother him at all that it was our first cold day of the season, or that the grass was wet, or that the leaves he was rolling in kept getting tangled in his tail and coat, after all, that's what he keeps me around for.