You can just walk in. It’s nature.
It’s God’s house. Wide open.
Aspen Creek Trail number 48 and a roaring snowmelt river. My dog had quite a romp here this morning.
I need nature these days. Helps settle me.
I’m going in for rotator cuff surgery and am filled with apprehension. Will I get strung out on Oxys and become one of those drug burnouts I’ve spent 18 sober years asserting I am not?
Going into the woods or desert helps me sort things out. Your heart journeys the footpath to enlightenment. You don’t even know it’s enlightenment, but as you pile back into your vehicle you’re smiling, so tell me what that is.
What will become of my job at Safeway? I had figured to wait till I was 70, in October, to retire and get my Social Security checks. The modest fund of a lifetime’s work would by then have grown to the max, at a rate of 8 percent per annum. Not bad. But this old gym-induced injury (trying to bench too much too wide) has morphed into major pain. I can barely shrug on a jacket. So maybe the whole plan needs to be moved to an earlier time frame.
I could use this opportunity to flatout retire. Now.
Only problem …
And do what?
Barb likes the gentle-leader umbilical cord system, which is why she might rightly claim to be the better trainer. Here are the two main gals in my life, Scout and my wife, out in front of me on a nature trail in Goodyear a few weeks ago.
The weird truth is that this is the best job I ever had. I guess I’m counting on Safeway to take me back, maybe not in the capacity of deli clerk, certainly not in the capacity of night closer, which is physically intensive — you try heaving mad-heavy sacks of squooshy stinking food garbage into a dumpster at the fatigued hour of 9 p.m. — but as bagger or cashier or that person who hangs out by self check to help spazzes (like me) check themselves out.
What to do? What will become of Bob Gitlin? Cue the wrenching violins.
Decisions, decisions.
Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” brims with a subtle ambiguity. It’s a poem that fools lots of people. But I still like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” better, and not just because it’s easier. It’s spookier, more beautiful.
Beautiful desert flowers in early bloom … while Prescott shivers.
Scout and I visited snowy woods of a morning out Copper Basin way. The little adventure put me in mind of both Frost poems.
Great spot to hike. You drive a mile and a half on the rough unpaved frontier portion of the road, real slow over mud and puddle ruts, to Aspen Creek Trail.
I could have got on the trailhead running off the parking lot. Might have been dryer. But I chose to cross the road and get on the still wintry trail running beside the snowmelt-swollen creek.
My dog’s coming out of heat, set to be spayed in a few weeks. We don’t want her running free to some, er, unforeseen tryst. But I took the chance of letting Scout run loose. I seemed to have the woods to myself.
She charged down the snowy bank to lap the cold clean running water, then got her back legs stuck trying to bound back up to the trail where I trudged along over the snow, availing myself of dirt and grass patches for better footing. Down and back and down again she went, frolicking with the peculiar uncomplicated joy of a one-year-old dog. I got her back with a jerky treat. I let her loose again for a bit heading back before leashing her up to lead us to the mud-spattered SUV. Driving home sipping coffee from my cup holder, I relished the wet dog smell. Now that’s a dog lover.
A curve in the path on the Goodyear trail … keeping it interesting just when you think you’re bored.
She rested her head on my forearm on the CD console, licked me. Ah, good old dog. Barb was up in Page seeing friends and Scout and I were bonding. I have come to realize she has healed me, a Savage Sam to ease the pain of losing Old Yeller.
That’s God’s lesson for the day. And good enough for me. My problems will take care of themselves.
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