It's Both

You might have the wrong impression. All those beautiful dawn photos of the lake and the glory hole might lead you to believe that the morning dog walk is perfectly bucolic and peaceful. And truly some of it is. But we walk with four dogs, my one beautiful Rosie girl and Jen’s three boys including Smelliot, oops typo, I mean Elliott.

We have just finished rifle season here in Vermont and the woods around the trail unfortunately have some deer remains where hunters gutted deer. Elliott quite likes the body parts. So these days the walk goes a little like this, good morning, oh it’s cold, oh it’s warm, oh it’s pretty, girl talk, girl talk, blah blah Elliott! ELLIOTT! sorry what were you saying? girl talk, (stunning beauty, jaw dropping beauty) ELLIOTT! girl talk ELLIOTT! ELLIOTT! ELLIOTT! No NO leave it, get up, LEAVE IT, LEAVE IT, LET”S GO, LEAVE IT. (Often some running towards the dog rolling on the whatever on the ground takes place here.)

To push matters over the edge, at the very end of the walk near the parking lot on more than one occasion of late there has been human stuff, you know of the ‘blank happens’ kind. Yes, Elliott again, he likes it.

On the way home today I thought about how I am, how easy it is for me to be immersed and committed to the whatever that is really good or conversely the whatever that is really bad but it is not so easy for me to hold them both loosely in my mind at once. The walk is good practice, the flood is even better.