Three trees and a dog
I park in thelot above the meadow in Bogart Park. It’s early and cool. As I step out of thetruck, the quiet settles on me like the light embrace of a beloved friend.
This is how Iknow it’s October: The slight bite in the air. The scent of wood smoke thatdrifts down and hovers in the meadow. The tone of the leaves rustling; soft andlilting in mid-summer when the leaves are new and tender, it is a crisper soundnow, as they dry and die and fall.
Maya alightsfrom the truck eagerly, her nostrils twitching. She knows where we are, wherethe trail begins, and she heads that way at a trot before I’ve barely had timeto close the door and hit the lock button.
Finding thetrail, she pulls to the end of her twenty-foot leash and takes the rollinghills as if they are red-carpet flat, while I laugh, struggling to keep up as Itell her, “My, slow down, honey.” But she is thrilled to be out here, so I lether charge on, and my tempo increases as my boots kick up dust.
She slowswhen we reach the big hill. She doesn’t like this trail because she cannot seearound the corners as we wind up and around on the climb, but she comes alongbeside me as I reassure her. Halfway up, she veers over to a single-tracktrail, a deer path that she has asked so many times to follow. Every othertime, I have said no. Today I tell her, “Okay, My, let’s go your way,” and onceagain she is charging along. I gently slow her down; I have to watch her feetand mine for rattlesnakes, as it is still warm enough to see them out.
I know wherethis trail goes, and I know it will double the distance of our walk today. Butit is a trail I have taken before with Sgt. Thomas Tibbs, and one I haveloved—though not chosen—for several years.
We wind downto the far side of the hill, Maya surprised to find the trail opening up andskirting an expansive meadow. She glances often to our right where she can hearthe penned sheep that sometimes graze here.
Then we cometo the first tree.
A fire in thefall of 2016 burned much of this side of the hill down to rubble. Black ash isstill 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 oakwe pass before taking the steep trail back up toward the parking lot boasts apicnic table beneath it. Maya waits patiently as I snap a photo… and I imaginemyself sitting down with a book or a notebook and a snack, whiling away a fewhours in the shade… in the quiet… in the solitude.
Maya doesthat all-over dog shake—as Frost’s “little horse” did when the poet stopped towatch the snow fall in a similarly hushed and serene place.
I, too, havepromises to keep.
So we tacklethe last arduous climb, then pause briefly in the shade to catch our breathbefore heading back to the truck and civilization.
There isanother way I mark the path into October, and that is by the shorter days, thediminishing light. At one time, October was my least favorite month. As thedarkness came on, my spirits would flag, my anxiety rise, often leaving medepressed until January.
No more. Thecure for darkness is light. So I will be out here as often as I can be, lettingMaya charge up the trail (as long as it’s safe to do so), pushing myself towalk farther each time, to take the longer route, the steeper trail, to hear myheartbeat pounding, to know that I am still alive, still surviving, and will bewhen the light returns once again in spring.
