Aki and I climb a service road to a high mountain meadow that still has snow. It’s an odd morning. No one else shares the road even though its over 50 degrees and blue sky backstops mountains, each a spruce green and white quilt. There is sun but it shines through a thin pewter haze that shows no sign of dissipating. Then there is the wind, not the broad breeze that can sweep across mountain and meadow, lifting the poodle’s earflaps when she faces into it, but a wind confined like a river, to unseen channels. When we cross one of these whippy tributaries, Aki dips her head low and I use the jacket, minutes ago unnecessary in the rising heat, as shield. Powering through, the little dog and I reach a saddle covered with snow. She is hesitant to follow me onto it, as if it lay over a lightly sleeping dragon. Maybe she smells the wolf that recently left this single track toward a pocket spruce forest. When the distance between us grows to the edge of her tolerance, Aki dashes toward me. Even though I am prepared for the dash, she runs too fast for me to capture her entire body with the camera.
Can the little dog read the signs of winter’s death, even in this high place? Already the rivulets run free, carrying snow melt to the sea. Bullet shaped skunk cabbage shoots power up through thawing ground. We can smell the decay of last fall’s grass and see the green specks of new growth pushing through it. Dash on, little dog, when this is gone, it will be all bog and biting bugs until next fall’s frosts.
Walking with Aki 