Waldo’s happy to be back out on the trail!

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

-Marcus Aurelius

For the past three days, temps have been in the 80s to low 90s.  Today, finally, things have cooled off to the high 60s.  Waldo and I are still walking in the morning, but not to avoid the heat.  I like to get the “doggy duty” out of the way and then have the rest of the day free.  Waldo, he’ll go for a walk at almost any time, as long as it’s not too hot.  We get to the trail around 9 and strike out on our route.  The sky is overcast and there is only a slight breeze, making the day even more pleasant.

As we walk along, I notice that the plants along our way have really enjoyed all the rain we’ve been getting.  With the heat came high humidity and when the colder air came along, the water the air held came out as rain.  There have been a few thunder-bumpers, but mostly it was intermittent light showers.  Just the kind of watering that plants love.  The Japanese knotweed is a good ten feet tall, or more, the bitter dock is prolific with huge leaves and orange jewelweed is everywhere.  Even the poison ivy is thriving (I’m fortunate enough not to be bothered by the stuff, which is a good thing as Waldo likes to walk through it).

Waldo, although glancing behind us every so often, looking for a nasty bicycle threatening us from the rear, is happy enough being out here in the cooler temperatures.  He’s nose-exploring the sides of the trail and occasionally repositioning a stick that has somehow gone astray.   There are a few bicycles that we pass, as well as joggers and a half dozen or more dogs.  We pay our due diligence to those we meet, without entering into any prolonged interaction, and continue on our way.  Except for those brief interludes, I’m left to my own devices, mostly thinking about this or that.

I don’t think it possible to get as old(ish) as I am without, at least occasionally, thinking about the inexorable end all of us must come to.  This is particularly poignant for me right now because my younger brother just died.  He had been living alone and was found dead in his bed, where he had likely been for a few days.  It is thought that he died of a stroke as he survived a pretty serious one 16 years ago.  There were four of us in our family: my older brother, by three years, myself, my sister, who is one year younger than I, and my younger brother, by five years.

Our family was close, but distant at the same time.  Years would go by without us seeing, or even talking to, each other, but only because we are a very independent lot and all of us were separately building our own lives in very different parts of the country (and, sometimes, out of the country).  When we get together, we always get along very well.  As we got older, we made a point of seeing each other more frequently, no more than every two years or so.  Just a month and a half before my brother’s death, the four of us got together at his house in Montana.  It was the first time we had all been together without husbands, wives, children or grandchildren since we were kids.  It was just the four of us.

Of course, we did a lot of reminiscing about days long gone.  We talked about our parents and rehashed what it was like for each of us growing up.  Our early experiences shaped us each in different ways and we traced how they led us to make the life choices we did.  Having a medical background, I was interested in knowing the health problems of my siblings.  My younger brother wasn’t bothered by anything other than his history of stroke and high cholesterol.  My sister recently had a bilateral mastectomy for breast cancer, but it wasn’t an aggressive type and they think they got it all.  I have a history of skin cancer, including melanoma, but, again, they think they got it all.  Of the four of us, my older brother seems to be the healthiest.  We pondered who would be the first to go and my younger brother thought it would be him, because of his proclivity for stroke.  How prescient.

It is very sad to lose a sibling, but it happened so far away that it seems more like a story that I heard about, than something real and in my face.  It is unlikely that one can get as old as I and my siblings are without having at least a nodding acquaintance with death.  I, as a retired ER doc, have probably confronted the Grim Reaper more than most.  You learn to accept death as a part of life.  I suppose the fact hasn’t really had enough time to fully penetrate my awareness, but there is a hole my brother left behind.  One that can never be filled.  I am eternally grateful that the four of us had that last opportunity to regroup and reach for closure on so many things in our distant past.

Right now, though, I am surrounded by an abundance of life, out here in the forest, and that is a very nice place to be when thinking of death.  My time, and Waldo’s, will come, but we’re both pretty healthy and it isn’t imminent.

In the meantime, we have many more miles to walk.

“Come on, you old fart. Pick up the pace, will ya?”

The sun is down and it’s quite dark, but the sky is still blue.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light,

-Helen Keller

It’s 8:45 PM, roughly a half hour after sunset, and Waldo and I are surrounded by twilight.  The horizon in the west is all pastel yellows and oranges and the sky above and to the east, where it can still get direct sunlight, is pale blue.  Down at ground level, shadows have gone the way of the dodo and almost all of the color has evaporated in the dimming light.  A waxing gibbous moon casts enough light from a cloudless sky that I can make out the tarmac, even though it is black as the darkest night in broad daylight.  The trees, bushes and weeds merge together as a mottled grayness that surrounds us on both sides.  Even though Waldo is mostly black, I can sort of see him trotting along up front at the forward end of the leash.

Ever since Ali, a rail trail denizen who we frequently pass, told me he used to walk out here late at night, I’ve been tempted to give it a try – just to see how different it is.  Today, it only cooled off to Waldo-trekking temperature after sunset, so here we are.  And it is different, in many ways.

The birds are quiet; they must have all packed it in for the day.  Instead of the vivacious and friendly avian chirp I usually hear, there is an ardent chirruping chorus from frogs somewhere off in the darkness.  I don’t hear many insects, but it is still early in the year for them.  They are out here, but not nearly in the numbers and variety we’ll have later on.  There is no rattle of dead leaves in the undergrowth from frolicking squirrels and chipmunks.  They, like the birds, must also be resting in their hidey-holes.  Except for the frogs, and the nearby street traffic, there is a blanket of silence that covers the forest.   There is not even the rustling of leaves as there is very little breeze.

Waldo is a night owl.  Sort of.  If I stay up after 11 PM, he retires into the bedroom.  However, it only takes a whispered “outside?” to bring him bolting up from a reclined coil in his bed to the apartment door.  Once outside, he rushes about, dancing and jumping, enjoying his last taste of outdoor freedom for the day.  He is much livelier and energetic than he is the rest of the day.  But, then, when we get back inside, he rushes off to lay down in his bed again, without my saying a word.

True to this pattern, Waldo is out front gently pulling at the leash.  I can’t really see that well what he’s doing, but whatever it is, he’s doing it with gusto.  After all, you don’t need daylight to be able to smell and he does see the world through his nose.  Even though we pass a few bikes out here, he isn’t hypervigilant like he is during the day.  Maybe that’s because we can’t see them, except for their headlights, and lights don’t look like a nasty old bicycles.

As the night comes on, even the sky loses its color.  There remains a gray celestial glow from the moonlight and the light pollution from surrounding cities (including Boston, which is only about 25 miles away).  There are also occasional street lights, lit up house windows, passing car headlights and other human sources of illumination, that add to the dim ambient glow.  In places, where the forest is thickest, the moonlight and the other sources of light are blocked by dense foliage and things get kinda black.  In these places, I can’t really see the tarmac and Waldo becomes only a couple of moving swatches of pale white — the tip of his tail and his feet.  I can still see where to go, after a fashion, because the space in front of me is paler than that off to the sides.  It’s kind of like going for the light at the end of a tunnel, except it’s only a suggestion of light, not the real deal.

I’ve never been afraid of the dark, other than being cautious not to stumble because I can’t see where I’m going.  I brought a headlamp with me, but it stays in my pocket.  Hubris, maybe, but I’m having a good time playing with the dark.  I don’t know if I could get away with it if the moon were to set (scheduled for around 1:45 AM), but it stays in the sky and both Waldo and I are comfortable with what light nature provides.

We get back to the car at 11 PM and head home.  Waldo seems grateful for a romp at night in the cool air, but I prefer the daytime.  There is not only so much more to see in the light, the world is so much more alive when the sun is up.

All the same, Waldo and I are happy to walk at almost anytime.

Later on, even the sky is black.

On the railroad bed.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

-John Muir

Today, Christine, Waldo and I are doing another leg of the Mass Central Rail Trail.  This piece starts at the intersection of Wachusett and Mill Streets in Holden and runs around 8 miles to near the intersection of Wachusett Street (not the same Wachusett Street) and East County Road in Rutland.  There are three places where the trail is paved with crushed stone on top of the old railroad bed and the rest is on backcountry two-lane roads.  At the moment, this is the official route and it doesn’t exactly follow along where the railroad was.  The road follows a saw-tooth pattern, see-sawing back and forth as if we were in a sailboat beating into the wind.  This is real country and there aren’t a lot of roads, so you have to take what you can get.  I don’t know, but I suspect that the trail follows the roads the way it does because the old railroad bed lies on private property, but I don’t know that for sure.

The day is overcast and cool, a great day for Waldo, with temps in the high 50s.  The ground is dry and there is only a slight breeze.  We pass a few people on the crushed stone parts of the trail, but not many.  There is not much traffic out here and we meet only an occasional car.  Most importantly, for Waldo, there are no bikes.  The one thing that stands out is that everything is so green.  We’ve had a wet spring and the leafy plants have relished it, turning lanes and byways into Emerald City streets.  Coming from a semi-arid part of the world, I’m always awed by just how green everything can get here in the spring and summer.

In some places, where our path leaves the old railroad bed, the bed just disappears and I can’t tell where it used to run.  There are other times when it continues on into the weeds and I’m tempted to bushwhack along it to see where it goes.  But that might add a number of miles to our trek because we’d have to turn back because of dense overgrowth, fences or no trespassing signs.  So I make a mental note of it and file it away for possibly another day.  The main point is to walk the entire Mass Central Rail Trail as it is, not the railroad bed as it was (although that does hold some temptation as well).

Waldo is having a good time, out front running point.  We walked so much over the years that he knows how to walk safely on the side of the road without my giving him any guidance.  It’s probably also true that he finds the better things to sniff over there.  The point is, I don’t have to continually watch him and redirect him to keep him safe.  If there was heavy traffic, I would get nervous and shorten his leash, but there’s not and he’s doing just fine at far end of his 26-foot leash.

As we walk along, talking about politics or the state of the world, Christine stops, bends over, picks up a leaf and stares at it.  “Whatcha got?” I ask.

“Dunno,” she says.  Christine is pretty good at botany and usually knows the plants she notices, but not always.

I look it up on the app on my phone.  Because we’ve had such a wet spring, plant life has proliferated.  We find weigela, dames rocket, corn speedwell, purple loosestrife and field horsetail — none of which I’ve seen on the Assebet River Rail Trail.  Some of it, like the weigela, is not native to this part of the world and was transplanted here by somebody at sometime.  It occurs to me that many of the plants we see probably have an interesting history of how they ended up when and where we happen to be walking.

The last part of our walk is on old railroad bed and runs straight up to where it Ts onto Wachusett Street, where we parked our car.  It is as wide as a two-lane street, surfaced with crushed stone and is bordered by maple trees on both sides.  This part has to be on private land, because there are small blue and white tubes that run between the tree trunks, connecting them all together and running off to a collection tank somewhere out of sight.  After collection, the sap is boiled down to make maple syrup.  We’ve seen this kind of collection system before, on some of our many treks, but it always interests me because I know nothing about harvesting for syrup.  There are a lot of maple trees here in New England; they’re everywhere.  But there aren’t that many stands of sugar maples.

We get back to our cars and head home, yet one more piece of the mass Central Rail Trail has passed under our feet.  The next piece is short, only about 2 miles or so, and ends on a 10 mile or so stretch that we’ve already walked.  But that’s for another day.  I will never live long enough to wander down all the interesting highways and byways that exist in the world.

And that’s a good thing.

The sugar maple sap collection system.

Things are getting greener.

Retirement is a blank piece of paper.   It is a chance to redesign your life into something new and different.

-Patrick Foley

Yesterday was a good day for a Waldo-walk.  The temperature was cool, in the mid-50s, and the sky overcast.  Just the kind of day for a trek that anyone with a sable birthday suit would ask for.  There was a light breeze and the humidity was tolerable.  All the trees were fully foliated, although some, like the mighty oaks, still had baby leaves.  Walking on the trail was like meandering through a puffy green tube, fragrant and vibrant with bird song.

Waldo was occasionally hanging back, being ever vigilant for the threat of an errant bicycle attacking us from the rear, but not reluctant to walk, like he is on a warm day.  He seemed perfectly happy to be out here on our rail-trail patrol, making sure that everything was as it should be – every smell in its proper place.  On our way back, we came upon Ali, someone who we see often out there in the woods, but seldom talk to very much.  Yesterday, we walked and talked for a good hour.

Waldo and I have made a good life in retirement.  Our wants are simple and easily assuaged.  We’re able to keep the hours of our days full of moments that are interesting enough.  The challenges and goals of the past are in the past – we have moved on.  I haven’t felt a need to replace the search for a better future with something else; I just let it go.  Waldo and I are content with what we have.  This cannot be said for all people who have retired.

Ali is a retired software engineer who bought one of the condos that were built on Ash Street, next to the trail, a couple of years ago.  He is a naturalized citizen who has lived and worked in this country for decades.  His daughter lives in Germany, where her job sent her, and his son lives and works in Hawaii.  The condo he owns is fairly large, I’d guess somewhere around 2400 square feet, and has three floors.  Ali lives there alone; I don’t know the particulars as to why.

As we made our way down the tarmac, we talked about a number of things, including what it’s like to be retired.  Ali told me he didn’t like retirement because he doesn’t know how to fill the empty hours without the structure of work.  The condo he lives in is large for one person and that makes his loneliness even worse.  He’s currently finishing his basement, not because he needs the space, but because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.  International travel is something he always enjoyed in the past, money is not problem, but he doesn’t like to travel alone, so he hasn’t gone anywhere since he retired.  Ali spends more time walking further on the rail trail than Waldo and I do.  I don’t think he’s depressed about his circumstances so much as he’s frustrated by a problem I don’t understand, whose solution he hasn’t yet worked out.

Ali doesn’t walk as much as he does just to fill the hours of the day.  Even while he was working, he would come out to the trail to walk for hours after dark.  No one else would be out there, just him.  Walking was a great stress reliever and it kept him in good shape while he was absorbed in his career.  Not once did he mention the simple joy of being out walking in the woods, but I think that was not because it wasn’t there so much as because it was an obvious fact and not germane to the problem at hand – how to adjust to retirement.

Making connections with other people has been a problem for him.  His estimation of it was that most of the elderly people he meets are in couples and it’s somehow awkward for a single person to interact with those who are paired-up.  He seemed to feel that he was overlooked by those in a relationship and it made him feel somewhat ostracized.  I’ve heard that from Phyllis as well, though I don’t notice it.  I could have suggested the obvious tactic of getting a dog, but I don’t think it would have treated what was really bothering him.  I regaled him with my experience travelling and briefly connecting with all kinds of people, men and women, young and old, couples, small groups of friends and solo adventurers, but it didn’t seem to offer Ali an alternative way to interact with others.

I can’t claim to understand Ali after only one hour’s conversation.  But he doesn’t seem very happy, or even satisfied, in his retirement.  It isn’t unusual for retirees to feel lonely and uncomfortably adrift without goals to orient toward and a work community for support.  I would guess Ali falls into that group.  On the other hand, I like being able to structure my day on the mood of the moment, nap when I want and pursue whatever interests me whenever it does.  My life doesn’t need more structure than that.

I find it interesting to learn other people’s experiences of life, including retirement.  I don’t have any answers as to how to best retire.  It’s like having a blank, unlined piece of paper to fill and no instructions or guidelines as to what should go on the page.  There are no answers here, just ways to cope.  And everyone is different.

Ali, Waldo and I parted ways as we passed his condo.  Waldo and I returned home, Waldo to his balcony and me to my recliner.  As Waldo settled onto his throne and I relaxed on mine, we rested in preparation for another day.

But Waldo and I have found our niche.

This is where we belong.

C’mon, you know what I want…

A dog can’t think that much about what he’s doing, he just does what feels right.

-Barbara Kingslover

It’s not at all unusual, while I’m out walking with Waldo, that passersby will say to me, “I love your dog!  He’s so cute!”

It’s happened so often, I have a canned response: “He’s a sweetheart too!  He’s got a really good heart, but his brain is a bit bent…”

Sure, I’m trying to be clever and cute, but there’s a great deal of truth in it too.

Border collies are renowned to be one of the most intelligent breeds of dogs. I suppose most people mean by this that they are easily trained.  And, compared to some other breeds, they are.  When they want to be.  But dog training means getting a dog to do the human thing you want him to do.  You don’t have to train a dog to do a dog thing, they already know how to do that.  In my experience, border collies are also one of the most independent of breeds.  Some dogs seem to go out of their way, obsequiously, to do what you want them to do.  Border collies…  Not so much.

During the Revolutionary War, Baron von Steuben was tasked by George Washington to train the Continental Army.  Von Steuben was somewhat frustrated by the troops, complaining that when he gave an order, it wasn’t simply obeyed.  To get cooperation, he had to explain why the troops should do it the way he wanted them to.  Training Waldo is something like that.

I decided that it would be fun to get Waldo to learn to push buttons that tell me what he wants.  There are cheap sturdy plastic buttons that you can buy that have prerecorded audio messages on them (you can also get buttons that allow you to record your own messages).  They include things like “Outside!” and “Water!”  I bought some buttons and started training with the “Outside!” button, since that is the one we would most often use.

Waldo learned very quickly what to do.  I would say, “Want to go outside?” and he would push the button.   When he pushed the button on his own, I would immediately take him out.  So far, so good.

I know for a fact that he also knows the word “water.”  When we ‘re out walking and he’s thirsty, if anyone mentions the word “water,” he immediately goes up to the person who said it and looks for a container of water.  I’ve seen him do this on many occasions.  So I added the “Water!” button.  At first, he was cooperative and did what was expected, but soon, he tired of the game and refused to hit any button.  He would give me a look that seemed to say, “This game is stupid, you know damn good and well what the hell I want, so get on with it!”  After many months, he has now gotten to the point where, when I ask him if he wants to go outside, he just vigorously slaps both buttons.  I really believe he’s not confused, but just frustrated, as if saying, “Come on!  Come on!  Get on with it!  The hell with your stupid game.  I don’t wanna play this way!  I wanna go outside!”

And, of course, he is right.  I do know what he wants.  We spend so much time together, we can read a great deal about each other.  Nothing needs to be said, no buttons need to be pushed.  I know when he wants to go outside and when he needs water.  I just know.  Waldo, too, knows what I want him to do without my giving him any commands.  That doesn’t mean he will necessarily do what I want him to do, but he knows what I want.

But when I say his brain is a bit bent, this is not the kind of thing I’m referring to.  Waldo instinctively reacts in a doggy manner to stuff that is totally foreign to what I would do.  Damn, what I’ve seen him put in his mouth that I wouldn’t touch with my hand in a glove!  He’ll refuse to drink water out of a bottle I have laboriously brought for him to drink from, then lap up stagnant, muddy water from a slimy puddle next to the trail.  Okay, science may be able to give an explanation for why dogs eat excrement, but, even so, I still feel it requires a very bent brain to actually do it.

I really like Waldo’s independent intelligence, as much as I struggle to get him to play according to my rules.  I don’t so much insist on that as negotiate, in a von Stueben kind of way.  Except in circumstances that involve our safety.  In those cases, my wants trump his and he knows it.  Usually, though, his reluctance to cooperate is a means by which his intelligence is communicating with mine.  And I really like that.

Above all, he is my friend.

…It’s not rocket science, you know.

Lesser celandine is thriving.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

-Basho

It amazes me how quickly spring is fully sprung, once Mother Nature gets going.  Two weeks ago, the oaks, maples and birches were still spindly skeletons, with only the tiniest of pale yellowish leaves.  Today, green has exploded everywhere!  Tall oaks have become seriously verdant, unlike the pastel buds they sported just a few days ago.  The Japanese knotweed stands a full five feet high, with stalks that are an inch in diameter.  Long swaths of green, leafy, lesser celandine are blossoming in pillowy patches next to the trail.  Small leaves of nascent orange jewelweed are poking up through the dirt and, in places, ground ivy covers the earth like a thick green shag carpet.  Garlic mustard, something that I always thought only grew close to the ground, stands a good three feet high with little white flowers.

Some of the rapidity of this change is, no doubt, due to all the rain we’ve gotten recently.  The past couple of weeks have been challenging for Waldo and me to find a dry spell long enough to complete our daily walk and stay dry.  Getting soaked, while not being a daily part of our routine, is something we’ve had to deal with more than once.  The rain not only supplies a good amount of water for growing plants, it also provides fertilizer.  I remember watering a lawn in Los Angeles and not seeing it grow much, only to have it need to be mowed right after a rainstorm.  The fertilizer in rain comes from water droplets falling through air where lightning “fixes” atmospheric nitrogen, that plants can’t use, into nitrites and nitrates, that they can use.  Where you get your water makes a difference.

I remember in the past, there was a period of time, while things were still quite wet, that the moss and liverwort grew thick and plump next to the tarmac.  The stuff is still there, but not in the prolific state of health it was last year.  Earlier this spring, I saw it rebound from hibernation, but not in the quantity and quality of last year.  I also remember seeing many examples of several different species of ferns growing in the wet places.  There are a few ferns out and about now, but not in the numbers that I remember.  The big leaves of skunk cabbage, bitter dock and sedge are growing next to the drainage ditches and streams, but not so much the ferns.  Maybe it’s still too early in the year?

There are clearly a lot of variables involved in what grows well and when it grows.  If I were a real naturalist, I’d be keeping a daily record of the temperature, humidity, rainfall, length of day and cloud cover, along with what’s growing and measurements of how big it is.  Maybe I should, it could be interesting.  But that would be like taking a camera on vacation.  I tried that in the past and gave it up because I found I spent too much time finding something to photograph and setting up interesting shots.  I would much rather spend my time and attention bathing in the ambience of the experience than recording it for later.  Still, it doesn’t have to be one thing or the other.  They are not entirely mutually exclusive.

Today, the temperature is in the 60s and overcast.  Humidity is 80%, but there is no appreciable chance of rain.  Daylight will last for a total of 14 hours and nineteen minutes.  Waldo is out in front, exploring the universe through his nose, and I am walking behind, enjoying the splendor of a spring day.  I try to pay attention to what is going on with the living things in my little corner of the world, not so I can report on it later (although that’s what I’m doing right now), but so that I am more fully engaged with the wonders of Mother Nature and my experience of her.  I firmly believe that the only contact we have with reality is to be fully aware of the present moment, and paying attention to what Mother Nature is doing is a good way to exercise that.

Soon, Phyllis, Christine, Waldo and I will be exploring the Midstate Trail, temperature and weather permitting.  For now, though, Waldo and I can enjoy the new burgeoning of life, after a long monotonous winter hibernation, right here on our own little patch of country.

And that is plenty.

There’s a lot of ground ivy too.

Sometimes it’s hot…

Getting old is like climbing a mountain.  You get a little out of breath, but the view is much better.

-Ingred Bergman

Waldo will be pushing 50 (inhuman years), come this August.  His demeanor has evened out over time, although he’s still a very active dog.  His puppy frenetic behavior has abated noticeably and he’s more willing to follow commands – that is, there are fewer times when he isn’t.  Oh, he still has OCD and gets fixated on the strangest things (some of which I’ve yet to figure out), but he’s much more redirectable.  He has also become more heat intolerant.

Way back when Christine, Waldo and I were walking across the state of Massachusetts, we got caught in temperatures in the 80s.  We had to stop and wait for Waldo to cool off in the shade here and there, but he seemed to tolerate it okay.  Last year, we walked in 78℉ temperatures and he laid down in the shade in wouldn’t continue (I did not try very hard to encourage him) and we cut the walk short.  A few days ago, the temperature was around 73℉ and he balked at the start of the rail trail.

I opened the car door to let him out and he just sat there, looking at me.  I called to him and he got out of the car, but not eagerly.  Then, as soon as we hit the trail, he kept looking where we had been and slowing down.  He was several yards to the rear and I had to pull at the leash to get him to keep up.  At first, I thought it was because he was worried about bicycles coming up from behind us.  There were no bikes there and, often, no people either.  The trail was empty.  When he started lying down in the weeds at the side of the trail, I gave up and turned around.  We had gone only a half-mile.  As soon as we headed the other way, he was all the way up front, at the forward end of the leash, pulling to get me to hurry up.  Apparently, he wanted to go home and chill.  Literally.

Maybe this happened because he just wasn’t in the mood for a long walk.  Who am I kidding?  He’s a border collie.  They’re always in the mood.  No, I think he just thought it wasn’t worth the discomfort to exert himself when it was so hot.  The balance between the need to get out and romp and the desire to not overheat fell, for him, clearly on the side of, “Let’s do this another day.”  I’m not so sure he has lost some heat tolerance due to getting older, or if he has gained a new appreciation for the comfort side of life.  I know retirement has given me a deep love for my recliner…

There’s something else going on here too.  You would think that Waldo’s coat is thickest during the season when the weather is the coldest.  That’s not so.  I can remember last December, when it was very cold and snowy, and Waldo’s fur was still thin and his tail was kind of scraggly.  Now, it’s mid spring and he is all fluffed out and hasn’t yet started to shed a lot.  The fur on his tail has only been thick and heavy the past couple of months.  Granted, Waldo is one of a kind, but still, didn’t his fur get the memo?  Come to think of it, what are the triggers that tell a dog’s body it’s time to grow hair?  For plants, it’s the length of the day and the temperature, that tells them when to grow and shed leaves.  But dogs like Waldo live, except for short periods of time, in the controlled environments we provide for them.  I wonder if that plays a role.

Then, today, the temperature dropped to the low 60s again and Waldo’s out at the forward end of the leash, pulling me onward, from the get-go.  He isn’t even looking behind us for bikes.  Of course, there aren’t any bikes out here because it’s kinda rainy, but that never stopped him in the past.  In a modified Koch’s postulates kind of way, that confirms it’s the heat that was bothering him before.

That makes me think that I’m going to have to come up with a modified game plan for how we burn off border-collie frenetic energy.  I always knew that, when Waldo got older, we would have to make some adjustments.  I guess that time is now.  On the days when the low temperature is 76℉, getting up before dawn may not be good enough.  We’re going to have to take shorter, more frequent walks instead of the longer treks we enjoy.  Well, there’s always fall and spring when we can still walk marathons.  For now, we’ll play it by ear.

After all, never again going for long walks is not something we will easily accept.

…sometimes it’s not.

The tree leaves are there, but they are small and hard to see.

Spring has returned.  The Earth is like a child that knows poems,

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Warm days have finally returned to Marlborough.  I’m talking about several days in a row of temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s.  Waldo and I are out on the trail, the skies are blue, there’s only a slight breeze and the ground is dry.

Leaves are popping out everywhere.  They’re still tiny and hard to see on the tall mighty oaks, but the maples are now a pale green with small, but recognizable maple leaves.  The Japanese knotweed has red and green sprouts, poking six inches and more up from the ground.  They’re next to last season’s hollow shafts, now all brown and brittle, ready to take their place.  There’s tiny little mugwort leaves mixed in with lesser celandine, green and fuzzy moss, liver wort and garlic mustard.  Jewelweed bushes are a pale yellow with nascent foliage and I pass box elder, burning bush, pagoda dogwood, border forsythia, Tatarian honeysuckle, multiflora rosa, black raspberry and Japanese honeysuckle.  All have leafy fuzz, not yet fully mature, hanging from their branches.  It’s easier to list the plants that are still stick figures than it is to list those that have finally awakened from winter’s deep sleep.  The place where I planted the wildflowers now has many sprouts reaching for sunlight, but not yet any flowers.

Waldo is a little nervous, constantly turning and looking behind us.  Even though it’s mid-week, well before 5 PM and the end of the workday, there are a lot of people, of all ages, out and about.  That, of course, includes bicycles, Waldo’s bane.  There are also roller skaters, and people, young and adult, on scooters.  We meet and greet many a canine friend and the people they are leading down the trail.  Everyone is in a good mood.  How could you not be on such a beautiful day.  People who have met Waldo before, remark about how he’s not carrying a stick.  Don’t they understand how hard it is to hold a stick in your mouth and pant at the same time?  For Waldo in his sable birthday suit, it is quite a warm day.

Everyday we pass the new park overlooking Fort Meadow Reservoir.  You know, the one where the city’s been pushing dirt around for over a year and a half.  I look for evidence of eminent grass seeding.  Alas, not yet.  They’ve finished leveling off the ground, even put up some fencing and paved a path parallel to the rail trail, but the ground is still brown.  If they don’t spray on the seed soon, it’s going to be next spring before they can open it up to the public.  I’d say looking for progress here is like watching grass grow, but there is no grass and if there were, it would grow faster.

Someone has planted a couple of flowers in the Covid garden, but other than that, there is little evidence of anyone paying it much attention.  I remember, during the lockdown, when the Covid garden first appeared.  I was really hopeful that more people would take an interest and make it into a community project.  But the lockdown was lifted and people went back about their lives.  It’s almost as if people have forgotten about that part of our recent history.  There are even crazies out there who claim that Covid was all a hoax.  It reminds me of the idiots who think the holocaust wasn’t real.  The Covid garden is still popular, though, and I often see people walking about it, enjoying what it has to offer.  Maybe now that I’ve planted wildflowers next door, if they abundantly bloom, there will be more interest in the garden.

Somehow, the sign that stands in front of the Marlborough rock garden, the one that says, “Take one, Leave one, Share one,” is now all bent up and rickety.  No longer do brightly colored rocks, bearing artistic patterns, rest there in a pile, like easter eggs ready to be collected.  It, too, has fallen into disrepair and neglect.

During the lockdown, when it was so dangerous to be in any kind of gathering, people still found a way to act as a caring community.  They reached out to the world with love and empathy, artistically sharing their humanity without thought of recompense.  I think that spirit is still there and always has been.  It’s just that everyday life now puts demands on our time and energy that saps what we have available to share our love of life with those we pass by.

I just hope it doesn’t take another lockdown to bring it back to the surface.

Fort Meadow Reservoir is a beige shadow of what it will be in a few weeks.

Snow yesterday….

You can’t get mad at weather because weather’s not about you.

-Douglas Coupland

Two days ago, it snowed.  Yeah, in April, it snowed.  News feeds said there were places in Massachusetts that had 9 inches of accumulation.  Christine said she got 6 inches in Holden.  When Waldo and I got out for our morning constitutional, there was a good inch of white slushy stuff covering everything.  No ice, though.  The temperature was around 32℉.

By the mid-afternoon, when we went for our rail trail walk, the temperature had risen to the mid to high 30s.  The snow had stopped, the sky remained overcast and there was a thin mist that coated my coat with a sheen of wet.  Snow still covered most of the ground off-trail, but it was all gone on the tarmac.  The wildflower seedlings were all covered with the white stuff and I worried they might not survive.  But, come on, they are wildflowers and must have evolved to deal with that kind of thing.  Snow in April, around here, is not unheard of and there was no hard freeze, with frozen ground and ice.  So, I think, there’s a good chance they’ll be okay.  Needless to say, I was wearing my parka that day.  Waldo seemed to enjoy the temperature and the fact there were no bicycles out and about.

The next day, it was still overcast, but the temperature had risen to between the high 30s and the low 40s.  The snow was all gone, except for a few small patches here and there.  The ground was wet and water gurgled and tinkled in the ditches and creeks next to the trail.  I left my parka at home to prevent getting too sweaty, but I still wore my rain pants and rain jacket over a light coat as wind breakers.  Waldo was still in his element, but a little anxious as one or two bicycles passed us.  A clear sign of warming weather.   The sprouts were still there and pretty much unchanged.  Someone had come along and planted a few flowers in the Covid garden, which was nice to see.  When snow hits around here in April, it doesn’t last long and life continues to waken from its deep winter sleep.  The buds on the oaks and maples are slowly growing and there are now several plants, like the multiflora rose, that have well developed, although still small, leaves growing along their branches.  Clumps of skunk cabbage are growing along the ditches and ponds.  Their leaves are huge when mature, but still the size of the palm of your hand.

Today, you’d think it was early summer, with temps of 68℉!  The skies are mostly blue and there is only a slight breeze.  I’m in shirtsleeves, with the cuffs rolled up to above the elbow, and I’m still working up a sweat.  Waldo is walking along with his tongue dragging on the ground and, of course, there are a number of bikes to deal with.  Even though it is early afternoon on a Monday, we pass quite a few people out here, walking.  Many are too young to be retired, I would think, and it makes me wonder how they can be out here.  I never could when I was working.  Oh well, I’m too old to be jealous about what my past was like.

The squirrels are out and chasing each other around.  Rabbits can be seen grazing and pooping.  Many birds are singing and telling the world what a great day it is.  I hear no Emmy birds yet.  They don’t show up until late spring to early summer.  I do hear a number of bird calls that I recognize, but can’t associate with any particular kind of bird.  I look in the direction that I hear the tweets and whistles coming from, but can’t see any bird.  They’re good at hiding in the shrubbery.  I would like to take a class in ornithology that would teach me how to associate what I hear with who is singing, but the opportunity has not yet arisen.  There are apps for that, of course, but I haven’t invested in one yet.  There are a few birdcalls I recognize, like crows and pigeons, but there are so many others.  Maybe one day…

Waldo seems to be as curious about what he smells as I am about what I see and hear.  He’s off looking at the world through his nose.  In the past, he always had a stick in his mouth, but not so much anymore.  I think they used to be his version of a security blanket.  Maybe he’s mellowed as he’s gotten older and doesn’t need them so much.  Or maybe he has just become so familiar with being out here that isn’t as threatening anymore.  They say familiarity breeds contempt, but not for Waldo.  The more he walks this trail, the more he loves it.

How many places in the world allow one to experience winter, spring and summer all within 3 days?  I’m sure there are others beside New England, but it is characteristic of here.  Like Mark Twain said, “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.”

Or you could be like Waldo and me and just enjoy the variety.

…gone today.

The trees still look kind of bare, but, if you look closely, tiny leaves are there.

The world laughs in flowers.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

We’re a few weeks into “calendar-spring” (spring according to dates) now and the trail is slowly beginning to change.  The days are getting rapidly longer – at the winter solstice, sunset was around 4:30 and it now happens at 7:30 (of course, one hour of the time difference is due to Daylight Savings Time).  The temperatures have been consistently warmer, with highs in the mid-60s on some days.  There has been quite of few rainy days recently and the ground, when not muddy, is damp.  All this is causing Mother Nature to stir from hibernation.

Today, the skies are blue, the temperature is in the low 40s and there is a bit of a wind which drops the wind chill down to the high 30s.  As Waldo and I walk down our trail, I occasionally stop and look closely at a dangling branch.  The oaks and maples have these waxy buds at their tips that look like bundles of tiny leaves balled up into fists.  Around the apartment building are some red maples and they already sport crimson flowers, but there are none here.  Moss and liverwort are turning a darker green and are plumping out and looking healthier than they did in winter.  Bitter dock leaves have sprouted, along with skunk weed in very wet places, and garlic mustard is everywhere.  Even the Japanese knotweed has started to send up thick, red and green sprouts.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw some ads for wildflower seeds and that planted an itch in my brain (the grist of any successful marketer).  Since then, I’ve been toying with the idea of planting some along the trail.  The idea of walking past a field of brightly colored wildflowers tugs at my soul.  In order for the seedlings to have a chance of taking root, though, I had to find a good open patch of soil not directly under a big tree.   I needed to avoid places where Japanese knotweed grows, too, because that stuff is ninja-empowered to overwhelm everything else.  The other weeds, that normally grow next to the trail, are still twigs and roots and haven’t yet blossomed light-stealing umbrellas.  Maybe newly planted flowers could compete in those places.  But, I figured, I’d have to avoid planting any seeds where there is a lot of grass as grass is really hardy stuff and would not readily give up territory for a pretty little thing.

I finally found a possible patch of ground running about thirty feet south from the Covid garden and four to six feet wide.  The Covid garden itself didn’t receive as much care last year as it did in previous years.  I don’t know why.  Maybe wildflowers will encourage some more interest.  Anyway, the ground was covered by dead leaves and broken sticks and only had a few small bunches of garlic mustard here and there.  I borrowed a rake from Christine and clawed the fall detritus from that ground, toward the ditch that runs next to the trail.   Underneath all the fallen oakleaves was soft, black, loamy soil.  No evidence of other plants.  I raked the ground until it was quite loose, then broadcast on the surface the seeds I bought.  I then raked the ground lightly again to cover at least some of the seeds in a little topsoil.

I chose a day to do this when it was forecast to rain intermittently for the following three days.  I’m relying on Mother Nature to do most of the gardening and have no intention of watering or weeding the crop. They are, after all, wildflowers.  I left Waldo home and spent about a half-hour raking and spreading what was supposed to be 50,000 seeds.  A couple of people passed me while I was working, but they ignored me.  I suppose it did look like I was working on an extension of the Covid garden.  Anyway, according to the package, 50,000 seeds is enough to sow over 2,000 square feet.  I spread them over about 200 square feet, or even less.  I decided that if the going was tough for the seedlings, maybe overplanting would allow at least some of them to survive.  I admit it, I don’t know what I’m doing.

That was a little over a week ago.  In the interim, it rained as forecast.  Today, I’m paying close attention to that ground to see if there is any life stirring.  And there is!  There are a number of two-leafed sprouts pushing their way up from beneath the soil all over the patch.  The question is, are they wildflower sprouts or native weed sprouts?  I look around and see there are a few other places where very similar-looking plantlings are trying to spring to life, so I don’t know.  I suspect that, like early developing animal fetuses, all dicotyledons (a particular kind of plant that includes flowers) have very similar-appearing sprouts.  I’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.

The question is, how long will I have to wait?  They say April showers bring May flowers, so, maybe, a month?  Worst case scenario?  I’m out $16 for a dream.  Very little risk for a very big potential benefit.

Meanwhile, Waldo and I get to enjoy Mother Nature the way she designed it.

The wildflower garden. Don’t know if the little green things are flowers or weeds…