Byron Brumbaugh

At Shaker Village, Hancock, MA.

Continued from last week…

If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine.  It’s lethal!

-Paul Coelho

We come across a gas station/convenience store and try to use their restroom, but it’s been closed, due to the virus.  It reminds me of being with my family, crossing the country from New York City to Salt Lake City, Utah, on November 22, 1963.  We were in Pennsylvania and it was getting dark.  The news of Kennedy’s assassination came over the car radio that afternoon and almost everything was closed down.  The signs outside motels were turned off, not because they were full, but because they were afraid.  Finally, we stopped at one and my mom and dad talked the proprietor into letting us spend the night.  There were four of us kids, ages 17 to 8, so that might have helped in the negotiations.  Next day, things improved, but people were still pretty upset and worried about what was going to happen next.  I’m going to have to ask Karen what her memories of the Kennedy assassination are; Christine was around one year old at the time and wouldn’t remember.  It felt to me, in some ways, like now, but the disruption didn’t last nearly as long.

And today, some fifty-seven years later, here we are, walking Waldo down a road that leads to Provincetown, MA in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic.  Life does take some interesting twist and turns.

We continue on down the road and, as we go, we can tell we’re getting closer to Pittsfield because there are more businesses and homes are closer together.  Still no sidewalks.  There aren’t many people we pass, only a handful, and those we do spontaneously keep more than six feet away.  We all know what’s going on, what the recommendations are, and nothing needs to be said about it.  The three of us are a friendly group and seek out conversation as we walk along.  The local denizens all appesr to be quite happy and weathering the viral storm quite well.  We mention we’re walking Waldo to Provincetown and they seem to think us interestingly unusual and wish us luck.  Maybe our ages add a little quirkiness to things too.  You know, a group of old farts thinking that it’s a good idea to walk 300 miles in the middle of a pandemic?  What could go wrong with that?  None we meet seem interested to join us and, to be honest, we don’t ask them to.

After just under four hours, we make it to the Big Y, get in the car we left there and drive to the car we left at the starting point.  It took more time to drive to and from home, about hundred and forty miles and just over two hours away, to the starting point than it did to do our walk.  It was a long day.  Waldo would have preferred the rail-trail, I’m pretty sure, although he is happy just to be out for a walk.

Me?  It feels good to be in the midst of a new adventure, as inconsequential as it is, and the company is good.  I lived with my family in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for a year and a half when I was twelve and thirteen years old.  That was a formative part of my life and the experience affected me profoundly in many ways, one of which was to permanently spoil me for adventure.  I don’t seem to be able to go for very long without doing some outrageous thing or other (at least as far as some might perceive it) in the spirit of adventure.  This walk is mild, compared to many I’ve been involved in, but adventure it is still.  And I like it.

One of the things I admire and respect about Christine the most is that she is her own woman.  She is no sheep.  Christine decides what she is going to do based on what Christine thinks is valid criteria.  Like me, she is a vagabond in life who follows her own counsel as to where she should step next.

Karen, I know less well, but she also seems to be quite an interesting individual who determines her own path.

Then there is Waldo.  Waldo is a newcomer to this planet, he’s only been here for twenty months, and every second of his life is a new adventure.  Rail-trail or highway, it’s all good.

The four of us make up a pretty offbeat and intrepid group.

Further down the road.

Our intrepid group at the New York border.
Left to right: Karen, me, Christine.
Wait, where’s Waldo?

The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.

-Bette Davis

Waldo and I are walking on the side of highway 20, a few miles west of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The temperature is in the mid-fifties and quite comfortable. There aren’t many cars and trucks, but those that pass us whiz by at forty miles an hour plus, making Waldo a little nervous. There are no sidewalks and not much space on the side of the road. Waldo trots along on the shoulder away from the traffic, but close enough to it to make him a little edgy. His tail isn’t tucked, but I can see his anxiety by the fact that he’s not sniffing everything along his path. He is a very good dog and stays safely away from the cars and trucks. It makes me a little nervous too and I keep a close eye on him. I keep him safe.

Two good friends of mine are with us, Christine (age 58) and Karen (age 68). The plan: we are to walk across the length of Massachusetts, from the New York border near Pittsfield, to the tip of Cape Cod at Provincetown. It’s about 300 miles total and we decided to do it in 6 – 10 mile chunks, once or twice or so a week, returning home after each walk. We hope to be done by August or September. Why? I don’t know. Christine came up with the idea and when I heard it, it sounded like an interesting thing to do. Karen was in support of it and there wasn’t any discussion at all about the whys or wherefores. We all just agreed it would a good thing to do and we started making plans. This was at the very beginning of the COVID thing, before the “shutdown,” and as things developed, we decided we could proceed safely, and in compliance, even as the rest of our lives are lived in isolation. (The part of the trek that I write about here happened just before my family got sick. When that happened, we took a little over two-week hiatus to make sure I wouldn’t be surreptitiously passing on the virus because of exposure to my family). It may sound strange, but it feels good to once again have a challenge to overcome. I have, after all, spent my goal-oriented life in deferred gratification, so putting one more obstacle in my way, even if totally arbitrary, makes life feel comfortably familiar. Today, our aim is to trek about 8 miles from the border to a Big Y grocery store in downtown Pittsfield.

It isn’t long and I’ve worked a little bit of a sweat. Waldo is panting pretty good and I give him water from his bottles more frequently than I have to on the rail-trail. Maybe being nervous is making him thirsty. The ground is dry and the going mostly pretty flat. Waldo is having some trouble finding good sticks to carry out here on the highway. Maybe in addition to his nervousness, the car, truck and people smells overpower everything else because Waldo doesn’t seem to be sniffing much at all. He is out front at the forward end of the leash, as usual, leading us along as if he knows where we need to go. Of course, there isn’t a lot of choice…

Most of our walk is rural. We’re clearly on the edge of a town, we pass houses every so often, but it’s pretty sparsely populated. There are no sidewalks and, in many places, the road goes right up to ground that would be difficult to walk on. So, we spend most of our time hoofing it on the edge of the tarmac, on the outside of the solid white line, still at a safe distance from the people who pass us in their metal cocoons. The traffic is nowhere near heavy and we see almost no one outside.

The three of us who can, spend our time talking to each other about whatever comes to mind. We don’t stay six feet away from each other; after all, we ride in the same car at times, but we are careful to maintain the six-foot distance when we meet the rare individual along our way. Our discussions include the Corona virus, some politics (but not too much – there is a lack of consensus among us about many things), personal stories, and anything interesting we come across on our way. It isn’t long and we come to Hancock, home of a Shaker village. The place is empty, because of Covid-19, even though it has been turned into a history museum. The whole countryside is very quiet.

The four of us plod along, the adventure just beginning.

To be continued next week…

We have a long way to go…

Go for a walk? Of course I want to go for a walk. Who cares if its raining?

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

-John F. Kennedy

It’s raining. Again. It’s not coming down real hard, but it’s wet enough to soak my socks. I have waterproof walking shoes, but the waterproofness applies only to the soles. There is a fabric top over the toes that allow for my feet to “breathe.” Good thing, because if they didn’t get some airing, I don’t think I could bear to take them off. But it allows the rain to get in and I end up with a squishy gait before too long.

Waldo trots along as if there’s no difference between today and a dry day. The water rolls off his coat, shiny from natural oils, and only very slowly penetrates to his skin. When it does, he does that doggy-shake thing where every square inch of skin waves back and forth like a wash woman shaking out a wet sheet before hanging it out on the clothesline. Now, in my old flabby age, my skin jiggles when I walk, but there is no way I could ever produce the oscillations he does. I don’t understand how it doesn’t give him a headache.

The forecast for this morning was 45% rain. Well, if this is 45% rain, I wonder what the other 55% is. I know, for a fact, that it’s not sunshine, nor snow, nor sleet, nor gloom of night, nor oobleck. It seems just as wet as the 100% rain I’ve been in, but that kind of rain does come down a little harder. But I’ve also driven through a cloudburst where the water was coming down so hard, it was like trying to drive through a waterfall – you couldn’t see the white line in the middle of the road with the windshield wipers going full blast, nor the shoulder of the road. You simply had to stop and wait for the storm to pass. Was that 1,000% rain? 10,000%?

All kidding aside, I really have wondered what it means when the weatherman says, “45% chance of rain.” Does it mean that the weatherman has arthritic joints that tell him it will rain with, um, a 45% likelihood? He makes a guess and he feels 45% sure that it’s right? I know enough about probability and statistics to know that the probability of a certain thing to occur, given that all other alternatives are equally probable, is the number of ways that thing can occur divided by the total number of ways that anything can occur. So, does 45% chance of rain mean that in similar circumstance, it rains 45% of the time? Does it mean that the meteorologist runs a large number of simulations and 45% of them predict that it’ll rain? Does it mean that he runs his simulations and they, on average, show that 45% of the forecast area will experience rain? It turns out, meteorologists use various models, that have taken many decades to design, and measured data to determine the chances that rain will happen somewhere in a large forecast area and determine what percentage of that area will receive any rain at all. They then multiply the two together. So, if there is a 50% chance that it’ll rain somewhere in the forecast area, but only 20% of the entire area will receive rain, then there is a 10% chance of rain. As we all know, it is difficult to predict the weather. Meteorologists are much better at it than they used to be, but still, they can only predict a probability of something happening. There is no certainty.

The same is true of what’s happening in the world today. No one can predict what’s going to happen with the global economy, the number of cases of COVID-19 (the official name of the disease), or the number of deaths that it’ll cause. Our ignorance goes deeper than people are used to. SARS-CoV-2 (the official name of the virus) is new and we really don’t know much about it. The best we can do is make educated guesses based on how similar viruses that we’ve confronted in the past behave. It’s often a “I’m about 45% sure it’ll rain” kind of educated guess. The more accurate statistical guesses like “45% of the forecast area will get rain” will have to wait until scientists have the time to do good, well-designed, controlled studies and discover enough about what’s happening to come up statistical models that will allow them to make a guess like “45% of the forecast area will experience rain.” Until then, we have to treat anecdotal observations as “interesting, but require more rigorous study” and avoid like the plague (no pun intended) the temptation to tout these observations as being strong evidence of this or that. Patience, grasshopper. Patience. And keep in mind that, in the end, we still won’t be able to come up with certainty, just probabilities.

Meanwhile, Waldo and I are out here, in the rain, doing our six miles, getting wet with 100% certainty.

So, are we going or not?

It’s a rainy day on the rail-trail.

COVID-19, are you going to be naughty or nice to me?

-Steven Magee

Zeus is pissing through a sieve and Waldo and I are out on the rail-trail, putting in our daily six miles. It’s chilly, temperature is in the mid-forties, rain is falling in a constant shower and gusts of wind drive the water through my gloves. My hiking shoes are “water-proof,” which means the soles and lower uppers are impermeable to water. To allow breathing, the uppers are covered with a fabric that allows the water to get in. We haven’t been walking for long and my socks are soaked. Waldo is wet, but the rain isn’t so forceful that he’s seeking shelter beneath bushes or trees. He just continues on down the trail, doing his Waldo-thing. I plod along behind, looking forward to getting warm and dry at home when we’re done.

The coronavirus has hit us where it counts. My daughter is a PACU nurse at a local hospital and she figured all along that she would bring it home, no matter how careful she was. However, the devil didn’t come in through that door. Instead, he assaulted them through the window. Her biological father, Adilson, who works as a commercial housekeeper and deemed to be essential, lives with my daughter and her family and brought it home from work. He had troubling symptoms of cough, headache and low-grade temperature that did not qualify him to get tested. His doctor thought he just had a cold. Then Emily and Matty got sick, but this was mild and lasted for only about three days. Adilson got slowly sicker, with worsening cough and higher temperatures. Finally, he could get tested, but the turn-around time would be around five days. Meanwhile my daughter’s husband fell ill and, finally, so did my daughter. Because she is a nurse, she could and did get tested with the results coming in about 24 hours. It was positive. Everyone else’s test came back positive as well, of course.

For the past month, my daughter has been strict about avoiding all but the most fleeting contact with me. She saw the really sick people in the ICU, who are mostly elderly, and she didn’t want me to take the risk of getting this disease. I saw the family on the rail-trail the day before my daughter became ill (remember, the family were told they just had colds), but we kept the six-foot distance prescribed by social isolation. I have not been wearing a mask when out on the trail as I believe that the protection it would offer is negligible compared to the protection that outdoors provides. Up until now, I remain well and out on the daily trek with Waldo.

Emily and Matty, at this point, are healthy, thank God, and very bored. They are now quarantined inside the house and can’t venture out except to retrieve the garbage cans. Video gaming, watching movies and YouTube on their iPads helps some, as does the perpetual sibling squabbling.

Adilson, after about two weeks of being sick, is finally feeling a bit better, although still symptomatic, and talking about going to Walmart. Maybe he’s in denial. He gets the “What part of quarantine don’t you understand?” reaction from the rest of the family and now spends most of his time sprawled on a couch.

My son-in-law is still having some fevers, along with most of the other symptoms, but doesn’t feet as bad as he did a few days ago. He, too, spends his days lying on a couch, watching TV and tactfully avoiding my daughter. At least he’s no longer spending the day in bed.

My daughter is irritable and just wants all this f***ing s**t to stop. The headaches, muscle pain, cough, and the rest has caused a fire breathing demon to possess her. I find this encouraging, as I know, from experience, that when she’s sick it’s only when the demon exorcises itself that I need to worry.

So, we, as a family, have been hit with the plague. But. luckier than all too many, it looks like we’ll weather it just fine. Now, if I can avoid getting sick, or if I do, survive it as well as my daughter’s family, we’ll be okay. This too shall pass.

As will this rain storm. And the cold weather. And whatever else life has to throw at us. Change is the only constant in life.

Waldo and I finish our walk, return home, dry out, warm up and chillax.

Another day, another six miles.

PS As of this posting, the family is fully on the mend and returning to work!

Don’t go toward the light, Waldo!

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

-Helen Keller

It is a sunny, cloudless, warm day today. Birds sing their joyful tunes in seemingly unending conversation. I wonder, why do humans feel that birdsong is joyful? Does it reflect an interspecies commonality of feeling? The birds don’t get anything out of our feeling that what they are doing is joyful. It isn’t something we learned because something that made us happy occurred after hearing birds sing. I’ve heard birds singing on dismal, grey, low overcast days who sound just as cheery as when it’s bright, warm and sunny. And listening to it always brings me back to the moment.

Waldo is elated, as ever, to be out on the rail-trail. He trots along, nose just above the ground, as if he’s on a vital mission and needs to get somewhere important as soon as possible, then, suddenly, veers off the path into the grass and bushes, pauses, focused on some small piece of nature. Equally as suddenly, he’s back on mission and trotting down the trail, pulling me behind. The entire time, his tail is wagging and I swear he has a grin — at least when he turns so I can see his face instead of his butt.

It’s about sixty degrees out and a few bushes and weeds have flowered. Those flowers weren’t there yesterday. I’ll bet they exploded with the dawn. Other bushes have leafed out with small leaves, but bigger than the ones they tentatively displayed yesterday. Spring is not far away, at least by nature’s calendar, if not by the Gregorian calendar. Still, the trees slumber in cold weather mode with only budded branch tips to show that they too are awakening to the warming weather.

As I walk along, I do a systems check. My legs are strong, my natural gait rapid and determined, my breathing slow and unlabored. My mood is calm and alert, in wonder of all that is life. But I can’t help but ponder if this might not be my last walk with Waldo for a while. The Coronavirus could strike at any minute, making it not only uncomfortable to be out here, but immoral. I don’t fear this so much as dread it, because that would mean that I would have to keep Waldo inside for at least two weeks. If I’m bedridden, it would be damned hard to entertain him by playing ball or keep-away with his tug rope. I could be so sick that I would find it exceedingly hard to get out of bed to clean up the poop and pee that he would have to grace me with. Family would step in and help out, even take Waldo to live with them if I ended up in the hospital, but he does require a lot of exercise and I don’t want to burden them if I can help it. Ah well, all life is struggle. I just need to focus on the beauty around me as I walk with Waldo today. I may not be here tomorrow.

Being over seventy, I am at higher risk of death from the virus than someone who is twenty. This doesn’t frighten me. My life is approaching its end anyway, though that’s probably still years from now, if something like COVID-19 doesn’t take me. Still, death is closer to me than it was when I was twenty. I think about it sometimes and its inevitability seems acceptable. At least now when I’m healthy and still able to walk with Waldo six miles a day. I probably will soil my drawers when the final moment is close. For now, I just soak in the joy of being out here with Waldo, knowing that there are all too few opportunities for this in my future.

I get a lot of joy by watching others enjoy themselves here on the rail-trail as well. The cheery hello as we pass, the friendly tone of voice as a few words are exchanged and the smiles that are revealed in the eyes as well as the lips. It warms my soul to see the smaller kids romp and play as they’re herded down the tarmac by their parents. I laugh inwardly when I see a little girl on her bicycle, followed by her dad jogging behind. “You’re supposed to keep up with your pace car!” I call to him as we pass. He laughs between labored breaths and continues his pursuit.

And, of course, Waldo. He is always so happy to be out here. I can see it in his gait, how he holds his tail, and even in his eye when he turns and gives me that are-you-okay look and the what’s-keeping-you sidelong glance.

And, bring what fate may, that does my heart good.

This is what I call a good day!

Look! This stick has a mouthle! A handle for the mouth!

Your fear is 100% dependent on you for its survival.

-Steve Maraboli

A few weeks ago, Waldo and I were out on the rail-trail, taking our daily six-mile trek.  About a half-mile in, we came across a big old tree that had fallen across the path, taking out the wooden rail fence on its way. We didn’t see it fall and any other trauma it caused had long dissipated.   I suspect the tree was blown over as most of it appeared quite dead – though this can be a little hard to determine in the winter when deciduous trees seem pretty dead anyway. Now, there was a stiff breeze blowing cool air through the foliage, but nothing dramatic. The birds were singing, a squirrel scurried up a tree at our approach, people passed us by without a sideways glance at the stiff, wooden corpse.

I passed Waldo, something that rarely happens and then only when he is stopped by a unyielding stick or a particularly interesting odor. Up ahead lay the tree on its side; one branch hanging horizontally at chest level, vibrating in the breeze. As we approached, Waldo suddenly and emphatically stopped, pulling the leash taut behind me. I tugged a little and turned to see what he was doing. Waldo was rooted to the tarmac, all four legs splayed apart and braced against the ground. He was dug in.

Waldo had a wide-eyed what-the-hell-is-that? expression pasted on his furry face and glared at the dancing branch. “It’s okay, Waldo,” I said in the most reassuring voice I could muster and tugged on the leash.

Nope, uh-uh, no way, not gonna happen, was his response. That thing looks scary!

I went to the trunk and stepped over and tried again.

Waldo stared back at me and jerked at the leash a little, turning his head side to side. He was not convinced.

He seemed to be staring at the threatening branch, so I stepped over the trunk and stood up against it, demonstrating that it offered me no harm. “It’s okay,” I said. “See? It’s nothing to be afraid of.” I then called to him without tugging on the leash.

Waldo stared, then, haltingly, took a step, then another, and finally decided that all was well and followed me over to the tree. We then continued on our way as if nothing happened. Fear evaporated, birdsong ruled and nature returned to being something benign and wonderous. And there was so much to smell and so many sticks that needed transportation.

Most, but not all, of the people we meet on the trail don’t seem to be all that frightened about the Coronavirus. There is probably a selection bias at work here, as if you were afraid, you might not venture outside and expose yourself to contamination. But I don’t think that’s the whole story.

For some of us, fear serves as an alarm. It tells us, “Whoa! Hang on here, tread carefully! Think before you act!” but it doesn’t incapacitate us. We still move forward, if we have decided it is okay to do so, tentatively, haltingly, warily, but inexorably. Our hearts may be pounding, our armpits soaked in sweat, our gait unsteady, but we move forward just the same. We collect information, sometimes by itself scary as hell, process it, estimate risk to benefit ratios, and plan a course of action based on reason, not fear. Reason can reassure, if we have faith in it, and like Waldo, we can step past that fallen tree with its brandishing branch.

We cannot wish this pandemic away, but we don’t need to be consumed by fear or despair either. We need to adjust our behavior, do the rational thing, take what precaution we can, keep calm and carry on. Stay six feet away from other people, wash your hands when you get home, educate yourself on and follow the recommendations of healthcare professionals, but don’t stop enjoying life. Come on out to the rail-trail, a few of you at a time so we can still isolate ourselves, and commune with nature. Say hello to the strangers you pass on the way at a distance, see nature start to come to life after so many weeks of cold and blustery weather. See the leaves start to grow on the tips of the branches, hear the birds in their many different voices as they return to witness the onset of spring. Take a walk, a bike ride, a jog or whatever down the rail-trail and witness life as it about to be sprung.

Waldo will be there, tail wagging, stick[s] in his mouth, pulling me along at the slow end of the leash, and we will be happy to see you.

So many sticks, so little time!

Look! A flower!

Eventually, everyone will be quarantined to their houses with no sports to watch… and in 9 months from now a boom of babies will be born… and we will call them Coronials.

-Unknown

This week Governor Baker put us on a stay-at-home advisory for at least two weeks, likely longer. Nonessential businesses are to be closed. Meanwhile, the cases of COVID-19 have skyrocketed both in Massachusetts and nationally. My family have all been deemed to be essential workers at this point, so this has had little additional impact on us. I went to the grocery store early Sunday morning and was able to find and purchase all that I needed.   I am shopping for what I need for a week only so that everyone else can get what they need too. So far, it hasn’t been an issue. I have plenty of dog food and have a delivery plan in place so that it gets replenished every six weeks. Waldo and I are still allowed to trek the rail-trail, so we plod along as usual, six miles a day.

Because being outside on the rail-trail is safer than indoor exercise at a gym, there are a lot of people on the trail these days. There are more people that are not working and need some way of passing the time and some of them are here too. Even though it’s been rather chilly, the path is full of bikers, joggers, roller-skaters, skate boarders, strollers with babies, old folks, parents, teenagers and kids of all ages and, of course, dogs. Waldo and I make a point to greet each as we pass. Most are agreeable and return our salutations — well, not Waldo’s kisses so much (though he does get a lot of pets, pats and scratches). Almost everyone is friendly and as sociable as you can get while keeping six feet away. There are no known cases of dogs passing the virus to humans, so it’s a safer alternative than getting close to or touching people and most dogs are appreciative of it. That’s a nice thing for those of us who like dogs as it gives us a way of making contact more intimate than an elbow bump. I don’t think Waldo is aware of any difference at all in our daily lives since the virus exploded in our midst.

The leaves in the trees stay in their bud-cocoons, but those of the smaller bushes and weeds are slowly hatching into daylight. They aren’t fully formed and still quite small, but you can see their leafiness if you look closely. I don’t think it will be long before we start seeing and smelling flowers; all it would take is a prolonged warm spell. Unfortunately, that’s not yet in the forecast – predictions are for temps to hover in the low fifties for the foreseeable future.

Birds are back in force, I hear a wide variety of calls and see a few. I’ve seen sparrows, robins, hawks, and even a cardinal. I’ve heard many more, but other than a crow’s caw, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what kind of bird is making the hubbub. I have heard the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker at work, though. No Emmy-birds yet. Maybe they come with the flowers. I’ll have to pay more attention this year.

The rest of the rail-trailers seem to be enjoying nature as well. All seem to be pleased to have the time and opportunity to be outside, even when they need to be swathed in winter clothing. A few seem wary and avoid others with a wide birth, some are reserved and ignore Waldo and I as we pass, but most are happy and as sociable as you can get, given the circumstances. Some are happier than others and one, seeing Waldo trotting along with the omnipresent stick in his mouth, called him “the branch manager.” Another, seeing the leash go between Waldo’s front and back legs, a condition he seems to prefer, called out, “Look, he has a leash-wedgie!” Your head has to be in a good place to think of stuff like that. Walking out in nature may not cure the coronavirus, but it is certainly good therapy for it.

Waldo and I are more than happy to share our beloved space and time with others. I just hope it doesn’t get so popular that they have to shut the rail-trail down because it’s impossible to maintain social distancing. Until then, take a break, walk a bit, or bike, or skate, or whatever pleases you. Get outside and enjoy what nature has to offer and remember the larger part of where we come from.

Waldo and I will be here, willing to share with a warm greeting, a smile, a wagging tail and a stick or two.

Spring is not far away!

Lots of people out today.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

-Helen Keller

It’s forty degrees on the rail-trail and colder than it has been recently.   The sky is partly cloudy and there is a nine MPH wind that intermittently blows the temperature well down into the thirties. The coronavirus hit and the schools will be closed for at least three weeks. This is day 5 (counting the weekend), as of this writing (it will be posted later). We still don’t know anyone, personally, that has contracted the disease, but they’re sick people out there. Testing is still abysmal. Trump recommended that congregations of people be limited to no more than ten, when possible, with the result that the kids are sequestered, not quarantined, at home. They have cabin fever for sure. Matty (9) and Emmy (13 in about 2 weeks) are amenable to going for a six-mile walk with Waldo and me and I call them to make sure they dress warmly because it is quite cold when the wind blows.

As we walk along, Waldo out front, eagerly pulling at the leash and picking up sticks, I like to point out various things I’ve noticed about that part of nature we’re trekking through. Emmy knows about the Emmy bird and we listen out for it. Nothing yet. I point out how the trees have little buds on their branches and some of the other plants have tiny leaves growing from their buds. Spring is all coiled up, ready to be sprung — a little surprising, given the temperature today. I show the kids where, about a week ago, the wind blew over a big old tree, taking out part of one of the fences. The city came down to the trail and cut up the tree with a chainsaw and left the pieces on the other side of the fence line. Robins have reappeared and we watch them flit about doing their bird thing. Emmy and Matty already know that they are dinosaurs, that birds are the only ones left from the mass extinction millions of years ago. We’re able to look out over the bare landscape, made naked by the winter, and get a good sense of the area we’re walking through – something we won’t be able to do during the months ahead, once all the leaves come out and block our view. Emmy thinks it looks too barren and is ugly. I point out that it’s just different and that soon, we’ll be walking through a green tunnel that’s full of new life and is incredibly beautiful. We come across a couple of algae-infested ponds and cross over a creek and that is quite scenic. We stop and listen to the tinkling voice of the water as it trickles its way around the rocks and sticks in its way.

As we walk along, we talk about all kinds of things that interests the kids. One of the big things is the coronavirus and its impact on our lives. They’ve been told to keep six feet away from other people, but other than that, it is safe to be here, outside, amongst a part of the world that doesn’t have such a heavy human hand controlling it. Other people are on the trail, some afoot, some jogging, some pushing baby carriages, some on bicycles, and some walking their dogs. The people keep their distance, but Waldo eagerly meets other dogs, when allowed, and I can’t avoid a greeting pat or two as we pass. No one, of course, appears ill. Who would go for a walk in the cold if they weren’t feeling well? Still, we are mindful that there are asymptomatic carriers. The kids aren’t afraid of getting sick, they know that the virus doesn’t seem to be affecting people under 18 much, but they are also aware that they could pass it on to those of us that are older and they know the consequences of that could be bad. So, we’re careful. It’s the social isolation that bothers the kids the most. Emmy misses her friends at school, she is a teenager now, and Matty is just bored by having to entertain himself all day.

As we walk along, I try to turn the kids’ attention to the natural world. I’m hoping if they open themselves up to experience it, they’ll learn to appreciate it and value it. It also turns their awareness toward the moment, something else to be enjoyed and treated lovingly. I try to encourage them to be curious, about everything, and to appreciate the golden opportunity of not knowing – something I feel is richer than the complacent hubris of thinking you know.

Waldo can help me out with all of this too. But for this trip, I try to just entertain the kids and give them some relief from the boredom of being locked inside. The coronavirus disruption to life might just last quite a long while.

And what better place to give them that relief than out on the rail-trail with Waldo?

Always eager to make new friends.

Who goes here? Man, he has some range!

Continued from last week…

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery.   Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.

-Alice Morse Earle

Taste is something that I don’t use except to decide what I want to eat and then enjoy it. There are only five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (also known as savory). The rest of our gustatory experience is due to the sense of smell – there is not a lot of distance between our mouths, where the food is, and our noses and they are connected. If I try something new to eat, I’ll put it up close to my nose and tentatively smell it to make sure I want to taste it, then put it in my mouth, taste it and decide if I want to eat it. When I give Waldo something new to eat, he’ll accept it in his mouth, put it on the ground and sniff it, then, if it’s up to snuff, he’ll eat it. Taste, for Waldo, is subordinate to smell.

There is one last sense, a sixth sense – and I’m not talking about ESP. For want of a better term, let me call it the mind sense. It is the sense that allows us to experience our internal world – thoughts, ideas, emotions, feelings of all kinds, our internal dialogue, all those things that happen exclusively inside our heads. You could call this self-awareness and be done with it, but you can also think of this awareness as being possible because of a sixth sense that allows us to experience our inner world like the other five senses allow us to experience the outer world. I’m pretty sure that Waldo also has a mind sense, but his inner experience is bound to be different. I wonder if that difference is more one of quantity than kind — his inner world would be dominated by smell-o-vision tinted glasses and he would probably have no internal dialogue that I would recognize as such. Underneath that, though, the rest just might be very similar.

We’re back home, I’m in my chair with the legs up. I’m going to try to channel Waldo. When I do this, I’m going to suppress my inner dialogue (because he doesn’t have one) and try not to label everything. I will fail because I’m going to describe what I’m experiencing and that requires words. But I’ll try.

I close my eyes and stop the stream of language that incessantly runs through my head. I can only do it intermittently, but I can do it for short periods. I picture what I just saw Waldo doing and what I’ve seen him do before. I imagine I’m seeing the world through his eyes and behind his nose.

I jump out of the thing that magically carries us [the car] to the place where we walk every day [the rail-trail]. I am so ready for this. Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go! Wait! I need a stick. There’s one right next to me on the ground. Quick sniff. Smells okay. I grab it between my teeth. I wait at the edge of the place that’s black, hard and has a smell like nothing in the rest of the outside [the street] where the big scary noisy things [cars] with funny black feet [tires] rush past and make bad smells from their butts. Come on, come on, come on! Let’s go! Finally, I hear “Okay.”   I’m off, across the black hard place and down the place that has all the interesting smells [the rail-trail]. I want to run so bad! Just let it out and go as fast as I can. My muscles are aching to pound where I run [the ground] as hard as possible, but something pulls me back, the thing that always curbs my style [the leash].

I can smell familiar stuff and some that is not. Hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of different odors. Always there and always changing. There’s that smell that’s strongest when I’m near a soft gooey place [mud], the one that’s heaviest near the little flat things [dead decaying leaves] that sometimes fly when the air moves [wind], the nasty smells that are worse when I’m near the black hard place [tarmac] and – whoa! What is that smell? It seems to be coming from that place over there that’s sort of like the big sticks stuck in the walking place [trees] where the animals that have long fluffy tails that I can never come close to catching [squirrels] hang out and the little animals that can jump so high into the air [birds] live. But it’s way different [a fence post]. It’s not very high and it has sticks [fence rails] that connect it to other sticks nearby [other fence posts]. Sniff, sniff, that smell is dog pee, no doubt about it. Gotta get closer to that weird stick [fence post] and check it out. Sniff, sniff. Yep. Male dog, older than me and bigger. Had some breakfast that tastes like the food I used to eat [chicken flavored]. Sniff, sniff, seems emotionally unstable [bipolar disorder] and kinda edgy [in a manic phase]. Has a mean streak and is hurtful too. Sniff, sniff, but pretty dumb. Definitely nasty and pushy and wants to dominate and control everything. Somebody I want to avoid. Sniff, sniff, his name is Trump.

Oops, snuck a little politics in there.

Whatever Waldo’s real experience is like, one thing is certain. It’s in the moment. Here and now.

Sigh. I’ll never be as good at that as he is, with or without nasal superpower.

Sniff, sniff. I dunno, Waldo. I got nothing.

What is that smell?

“I smell the smelly smell of something that smells smelly.”

-Spongebob Squarepants

Waldo and I are on our first walk of the morning. The sky is clear, there is next to no wind and it is cold. It’s still quite sleepy out and full wakefulness comes gradually as the fog of slumber slowly drains from my mind. As I exhale, I watch my breath condense in steamy clouds and then just hang there, a foot or so in front of my face, as if time were suspended. The yellowed grass still bears patches of ice left over from the last snowstorm and I have to be careful where I step. The sidewalks and driveways have been cleared of ice and snow, but where we walk, beneath the barren apple and pear trees, around the thickets of bushes where rabbits make their homes, it can be treacherous and I keep my eyes open to avoid the worst of it. I can see Waldo’s breath as well, as he trots about the grounds, sniffing everywhere, his odar (odor ranging and direction) on full power. He stops and sticks the tip of his nose a fraction of an inch above the stinkiest poop, that even I can smell from where I stand, and spends a full minute taking it all in. It seems his nasal superpower (some estimates are between 10,000 and 100,000 times more sensitive than human’s) not only picks up the faintest of odors, it’s also able to distinguish between a wide variety of nuance. There must be a lot of information there he needs to process. I wonder what all that smell tells him. It begs the question, what’s it like to see the world through your nose?

Of course, dogs do have a good sense of sight as well as of smell. In broad daylight, it’s not as good as we humans have, but it’s good. They can see better in low light than we can, but it’s not very good vision then. To watch Waldo, you’d think that sight was merely a long-range alert system, telling him what to seek out and sniff. At least most of the time. Humans are very visual and spend most of their sensory attention on what they see. No wonder. My eyesight is good, although I wear glasses. But when I take a whiff of the freezing air, I don’t smell much of anything. Today, I have a runny nose from the cold and most of what I smell is snot, which doesn’t smell like much at all.

Waldo’s hearing is quite good too, including sounds octaves higher than I can sense. It seems to me that he uses it more as passive sonar in order to find things that may be interesting to sniff than as primary input. Like the way he uses his sense of sight. My second most used sense is hearing. I have excellent hearing for my age. I like to ignore the visual input, sometimes by closing my eyes and sometimes by just not paying attention to it, and focus on what I can hear. It not only puts my awareness squarely in the moment, it also opens up an entire universe not accessible by sight. Gay, piping birdsong, the sound of wind tickling leaves, the thunderous turbulent noise of an approaching gust of wind as it elbows its way through trees and around bushes, the slapping sound of my footfalls as I walk, the tinkling babble of water in a nearby brook as it flows around rocks and branches that try to block its run to the sea, all of this and much more can open my attention to a world I cannot see. But I have never used it to find something to smell.

Then there is the sense of touch. I do use it, sometimes, to locate things when I want my eyes on something else. Like finding the button on the key fob in my pocket so I can lock or unlock the car door. I don’t consciously use touch much anymore, to explore the world. I did when I was much younger and sometimes still do to enhance my visual experience. For example, if I want to test if something is wet or to check its temperature. Humans have densely packed tactile sensors on their fingertips and tongues. Dogs have the same on their tongues and I think that when Waldo licks some piece of yuk on the ground, he’s doing it to see what it feels like more than taste it. The pads on his paws are way too thick and cornified to be able to feel much so he probably doesn’t use his feet’s sense of touch for exploring his world. Touch does not offer Waldo much to compete with his sense of smell.

To be continued next week…

Nice to smell you.