Walking with Waldo

I didn’t do it…

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

A polar vortex dropped down out of Canada and sat on us.  But it’s not sitting still.  It blows and blusters with sustained winds of up to 24 mph and gusts twice that.  I’ve been colder before, but it was high in the mountains, at 10,000 feet, or at 19,341 feet (atop Kilimanjaro), not at 450 feet in Massachusetts.  The air temperature is touching the low double digits below zero, and with all that wind, the effective temperature is as cold as -32℉.  Cold enough so my fingers are aching after walking Waldo for just ten minutes, even though they’re buried deep in thick winter gloves.  My forehead, nose and chin are numb and icicles are growing and tugging on my mustache.  Although Waldo prances around as we walk, without showing any evidence of distress, when we’re home, he’s in and out on the balcony and doesn’t stay outside for long.  We haven’t gone on the rail-trail for the two days now, it’s so cold, but we still have to go out for tank-emptying walks several times a day.

It’s not the woods, the grounds are manicured, but walking around the complex is still pleasant.  There are different kinds of plants around, many of which were planted here and not wild.  There are squirrels, mice, rabbits, birds and even the occasional groundhog and opossum (none of which are out and about today!).  The buildings are spaced far apart and the landscapers who care for the place keep things green (except the flowers and red trees) and trimmed, making short, but not too short, walks pleasant all year round.  Its biggest drawback is that we can’t go for long walks without going ‘round and ‘round and ‘round.  But that’s not an issue today.   There is just no way I’m going to take Waldo out in these temperatures for a two and a half hour walk on our usual jaunt.

Waldo takes to the lower level of activity pretty well.  He doesn’t get all the exercise he needs and is a bit restless, but he still enjoys being outside, if only for a few minutes, sniffing around, moving sticks here and there and meeting the other souls and their pets out doing the doggy duty.  His tail is up and wagging and he’s engaged in what’s going on around him.  He’s had to put up with worse, for longer, like when the pinched nerve in my back made it impossible for us to walk very far.  But as long as I “embrace the suck” in this cold and take him out when he asks, he does okay.  And he doesn’t ask often, maybe every couple of hours or so – thank God for the balcony!  He’s content to be in and out there in between our walks.

It feels strange to be so cold when there is so little snow about.  It was warm enough, since the last snowstorm, that most of it melted before the bitter cold swooped down from the arctic.  There are still some icy patches of white, where the snow was piled up in drifts, either by man or wind, but they aren’t many or deep.

Waldo and I like to chase around icy chunks of the snow, when we can find some, that were packed tight by plows and pushed to the side.  It’s kind of a soccer thing we do.  I kick some down the trail, bits of snow and ice flying off from the impact of my toe, and Waldo chases after it and tries to get a bite on it.  Each kick, and subsequent bounce and slide, shrinks the thing and eventually it’s small enough for Waldo to carry it around in his mouth.  Then the game is over and Waldo eats what’s left with crunching enthusiasm.  Today, when we do find a chunk, it’s welded hard to the ground and going nowhere without an acetylene torch to separate it from its bonds.  To be honest, I’m not all that eager to do anything to delay our return to the warmth and coziness waiting for us anyway, but Waldo does like to play.

Soon, we’re back inside and I put a looped video of a fire burning in a hearth on the TV.  It comes with sounds of popping and crackling, just like the real thing, and I swear it helps me warm up.  I even light a balsam fir scented candle, for odor-effect, to complete the ambience.   Waldo is in and out, but he does it without letting any of the cold air in.  After a bit of a rest, when Waldo isn’t outside, we kick around his giggle ball for a while, or I pull out the laser pointer and he chases after the little red dot.  As I write this, he’s curled up on his bed, chewing on a bone.

Tomorrow, the forecast is for weather in the high forties!  After two days in confinement, it’s gonna be great to be back in the woods again.

Maybe we’ll even do the full 10.5 miles of the rail-trail instead of our usual six…

Look what I found!

At one time, this was a mortarless stone bridge over the railroad.

Plaque commemorating the bridge.

Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.

-Henry David Thoreau

The weather warmed, providing temperatures into the high forties.  Waldo and I are out on our daily trek and it’s a pleasant walk now — I only have to wear a jacket and a ski cap to be comfortable.  These balmy days are ideal for Waldo — not cold at all and not warm enough that he needs water along the way.  Apparently, things have softened enough for others, besides the regulars, to appear here.  Though there still aren’t as many people out on the trail as there are in the spring and summer, there are more than the handful of brave souls who venture out in wintery conditions.  Mother Nature sleeps on and doesn’t seem to be confused by the early warming trend, though (with the notable exceptions I’ve mentioned before in other posts).  The oaks, maples, birches and the other deciduous trees are naked and bony and the weeds have withered and dried up into delicate sticks, as all wait for the real spring yet to come.

As we trek along, Waldo deviates from his perpetual search for the ultimate stick and, looking for pets and pats, saunters up to a gentleman sitting on a bench.  The bench is located at an overlook where Fort Meadow Reservoir and the abutting community can be enjoyed in all their beauty.  Large houses are ensconced on the distant shore, almost to the water’s edge, and one can almost imagine them to belong to a small community on the Maine coast – except there aren’t any boats in the water.  We strike up a conversation, as Waldo gets what he sees as his due, and the man tells me about some Marlborough history I wasn’t aware of.  We don’t talk for long, since Waldo and I still have some miles to walk, and we say goodbye and go on our way.  The conversation does make me think about the rail-trail’s past, though.

Today, Marlborough has a population of 41,793, according to the 2020 census, and is home to a plethora of businesses, including Raytheon, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, Boston Scientific, AT&T, Apple Inc, Lucent Technologies and many others.  The Assabet River Rail Trail is a conversion of the abandoned Marlborough branch of the Fitchburg Railroad.  The trail was originally envisioned to run through Marlborough, Hudson, Stow, Maynard and Acton on the old railroad bed, but, to date, has a 4.0 mile gap that doesn’t even have a recognizable bed to follow.  The gap starts in northern Hudson, 5.25 miles from the southern terminus in downtown Marlborough, and runs to the beginning of the northern 3.4 mile piece that goes to the South Acton MBTA train station.  The Acton station lies along the commuter line that connects Fitchburg to Boston at North Station.

The railroad that gave birth to the rail-trail was built over a six-year period, from 1849 to 1855.  It provided both passenger and freight service for the five towns mentioned above.  The freight included shoes and boots, a major product of Marlborough (population then 2,941) in 1850.  In 1851, Henry David Thoreau walked along the tracks on his way to Lake Boon, which lies near the southern end of the northern part of the trail, so it even has some literary fame!

Passenger service dried up over a period of 28 years, from 1930 to 1958, but freight service continued until the 1960s.  The conversion to a rail-trail started in 2003 and the southern portion was completed in 2005 (the northern part began in 2013 and was finished in 2016), so the path is relatively new.  All the rails have disappeared (just this year, I witnessed the last piece being pulled out of the ground while Ash Street was being repaved), but there are still many signs of its previous existence.  Besides the roadbed itself, there are loading docks, the occasional remnant of a siding, railroad bridges and a few odd bits of quarried stone, sticking up out of the ground, that once served some, now unidentifiable, purpose.

As Waldo winds his way down the path, doing his Waldo thing, I imagine what it was like riding in a passenger car behind a steam locomotive running over this same ground.  I pretend I’m alongside blue-clad Civil War soldiers riding the train to Acton, then connecting on to Boston, on their way to battle.  Or I’m sitting among World War I doughboys, in khaki uniforms, taking the train to Boston, then on to a troop ship bound for that European conflict.  Perhaps my fellow travelers are young people, in casual dress, on their way into the big city for a shopping spree.  Businessmen are here, dressed in suits, going back and forth to ply their trade.  Mothers and daughters, wearing their best dresses, are going to visit friends and family.  Each of us are sitting on a wooden bench, sweating in the summer heat without air conditioning, or freezing in the winter cold with inadequate heat from a small stove in the front of the railcar.  Always, we’re swaying back and forth and jolting about as the train crawls to multiple stops along the way.  The smoke from the coal-fired boilers lays dark gray above and to the sides of the train and burned-out cinders float in through the windows, cracks and crannies to be lodged in everyone’s hair and clothing and freckle our faces with a black, gritty residue.  The smell of burning coal, creosote, spent steam and machinery oil is unignorable, much more intense than the mild odor of jet fuel in today’s airports.  The creaking and banging of the iron wheels on the iron rails and the rattling of the wagons being pulled around curves and over the gaps in the rails, add to the loud chug-chugging of the locomotive, making it impossible to carry on a normal conversation.  A fine adventure, indeed.

Back in the here and now, Waldo and I walk, instead of ride, down the same path.  Still no air conditioning or adequate heat, but we’re comfortable enough.  The scenery we observe now was much different back in the heyday of the railroad – even the trees we see didn’t exist then.  It’s a lot quieter these days without all the hubbub of a steam locomotive.  But despite all the differences, the path is the same, and it’s still a good place to venture.  And I don’t think Thoreau, walking along the tracks, could appreciate it any more than Waldo and I do, some 172 years later.  We love this place.

We’ve made it our own.

At one time, a railroad bridge over the Assabet River.

Plaque commemorating the river bridge.

It’s snowing big flakes…

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it’s a magical event.  You go to bed in one world and wake up in another quite different.

-J.B. Priestly

Waldo and I are out walking in a snowstorm.  The temperature is hovering somewhere around freezing and there is next to no wind.  I can see my breath hover around my face as I walk along, as if it were only begrudgingly leaving the warmth of my body.  It hangs there in a ragged fog, idly swirling and wispy, then slowly rises and dissipates.  Waldo’s breath is visible too.  It puffs out of his long snout in short blasts like a locomotive chugging steam and stirs me to accompany his panting with an occasional, “Woo-woo!”  The snow is coming down in amorphous, delicate, diaphanous balls of whiteness, just a little smaller than grapes.  They slowly float down until they get velcroed onto my coat, tree limbs, the tarmac and Waldo’s back.  There, they come together and grow into a soft, cottony blanket.  I ignore them, Waldo shakes them off, and the ground gathers them in with open arms, as if it were waiting since December for a good covering of snow.  What was an accumulation of one inch when we started, soon becomes two and it’s still snowing.

The path is, as we start, undisturbed and Waldo and I are the first to leave evidence that there are animals out and about.  Soon, though, we pass another traveler and our footprints are no longer the only scars left on an otherwise smooth, fluffy plane of whiteness.  A little further on and we come across more footprints, now a bit blurry from the continuing snowfall – clear witness to yet more people out walking in the storm.  I do enjoy knowing that other people are out here in nature, but it’s somehow a little unsettling to find out we’re not alone.  I feel robbed of the pristine experience of communing, just Waldo and me, with Gaia.  There’s something special about being surrounded by nothing but wilderness, as if escape from the hurley-burley of mankind is possible and I can immerse myself in something more basic.  Like I have broken away from the artificial world created by man and can imbibe in something more fundamental, solid and real.  But just to be out here in the woods, walking with Waldo, in the midst of a heavy snowfall, is plenty good enough and I’m willing to share.

The snow is now three inches deep – deep enough for Waldo to make snow-doggies, which he does with relish.  He leans forward, butt and tail in the air, chest, neck and chin on the ground with forelegs stretched backwards and nose thrust into the icy whiteness in front of him, followed by a roll onto his back and a writhing back and forth as if he has an itch that only that can satisfy.  He then gets up, shakes himself off, finds another undisturbed patch of snow, and repeats.  It looks like this could go on for a while, but we have miles to tread, so I encourage him to walk on down the trail and we’re off once again.

The snow is piling up in the trees as well as on the ground.  It’s sticky enough that it adheres to the tops of branches like someone has covered them in whipped cream.  The white pines are all flocked with snow and their long branches sag noticeably from the weight.  The dead oak covered in English ivy looks like a real tall Gossypium cotton plant, with balls of white heaped up on top of the green leaves of the vine.  Winter lacks the riot of color found in the other seasons, but, just like an Ansel Adams black and white photo, it offers up a beauty all its own.

Then the snow changes to tiny little flakes and the accumulation essentially stops.  It seems that three inches is all we’re going to get.  I’m a bit sorry to see it go, but not sad about it.  Three inches is enough to make walking a little bit of a chore because my feet have to shove it out of the way for each step.  More than four inches is definitely work.  When I’m out walking for two and a half hours, for six miles or so, it can get very tiring very fast.  As it is, I’ll just be a bit more certain that Waldo and I have been on a snowy trek.  Three inches seems paltry, compared to many storms we’ve had in past years, but at least we did get to enjoy walking in some snow this winter.

And then, we’re back at home.   I shed my wintery layers, Waldo shakes off the last remnants of snow and ice and we settle in to warm up and feed.  Waldo retires to his balcony throne and I to my blessed recliner.

Winter seems somehow now complete.

…and it keeps coming down!

And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.

-John Muir

The weather has finally settled down from its wild swings.  We now enjoy daily temperatures somewhere near 40℉ for a high and around 30℉ for a low.  There are frequent showers, mostly rain, but not the hard driving stuff, mainly misty drizzles.  On the occasion when we do get snow, the accumulation is no more than an inch and it’s gone in a day or two.  I see some plants with swollen buds at the tips of their branches and I can’t help but wonder if they’ve been deceived by the mild winter into a premature onset of foliation.  They don’t seem to be any worse for it, though. The mosses have enjoyed a few extra months of prolonged damp and sun exposure that makes them flourish.  Our walks have been pleasant, but then they always are, and we haven’t had to plow through 4 or more inches of snow.  Even that’s not unpleasant — it’s just a lot of work.  There are no such things as bad walks; some are just warmer and dryer than others.

Waldo really enjoys going out on the rail-trail on nearly a daily basis.  If he were working on a farm, herding sheep, for example, his life would be different, but I don’t think he would be any happier.  As it is, he gets plenty of time to wander around, smell what’s here, pick up sticks, move them around and meet new dogs and people.  We’re out here so often and so much that he has become famous – at least among the regulars on the trail.  It’s not unusual at all to pass someone, who I don’t remember, and they’ll call Waldo by name.

I, too, have gained some notoriety.  I passed a woman the other day who asked, “Are you the guy who walks three hours a day?”

“We do, Waldo and I,” I replied.

“You must be in great shape,” she responded.

“Hey, I didn’t say it didn’t hurt,” I said.  I am getting older and my muscles do ache a bit by the end of our treks.

Waldo’s response to people and dogs is variable.  If his OCD hasn’t diverted his attention elsewhere, he likes to meet everyone and every dog we pass.  He wags his tail on one side of his body, then both sides and, as we get closer, he exhibits what it means for the tail to wag the dog and everything moves.  For people, after a few sniffs and licks, and getting some pats himself, he’s back on down the trail as if they didn’t exist.  For dogs, it’s more of a mutual sniffing tryst, followed by an attempted romp that ends in leashes getting entangled.   In both cases, after a few seconds, he has a been-there-done-that attitude and is once again focused on what’s in front of his nose.

On the other hand, if he’s absorbed in something, I never can tell what, he’s likely to keep going as if the people or dogs don’t exist.  He’ll pass them by without even a sideways glance and sniffs his way on down the trail.  If we pass an aggressive dog, I hold him close until we’re abreast.  The other dog barks, growls and tries to lunge at Waldo, but Waldo just keeps walking straight ahead at my side.  Then I let him go to the end of the leash and he trots on as if nothing unusual or threatening were amiss.  I can’t help but wonder if that attitude doesn’t drive the other dog nuts…

For me, I try to say a friendly hello to everyone we pass.  Most are happily receptive, but a few grumpy people are too affected by their personal strife to acknowledge our existence.  I let them pass, without taking it personally, to wallow in whatever misery they carry.   The more gregarious people will stop and we’ll exchange a few niceties, before moving on.  We are here, after all, for the walk, not the socialization.  There is no other reason to be here, except, maybe, riding a bike or rolling on a skateboard or rollerblades.  The dogs we pass, I pat and offer one of Waldo’s treats.  Waldo doesn’t mind as it means he’ll be getting one too.

And all this is happening in the middle of winter, not just a mild spring or fall day.  There is something about the woods that inexorably drives some people, and most dogs, to come out and walk the walk, in December and January, as well as May and October.  Even in some pretty rough weather, Waldo and I have never been out here and not passed at least one other person, or person and dog, doing what we’re doing.

Walking down the rail-trail through the forest.

A marcescent maple on a snowy day.

Waldo as a puppy.

A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature.  You can’t get it by breeding for it, and you can’t buy it with money.  It just happens along.

-E B White

The low winter sun casts long shadows across the tarmac, even though it’s one in the afternoon.  The air has an icy bite to it as we start out on our daily trek.  Fortunately, there is only a light breeze and I’m comfortable in my down parka and gloves.  Even though the temps are in the high twenties, there are quite a few people and dogs that we pass, or pass us, as we saunter and prance along (I saunter, Waldo prances as best he can).  There are even people on roller blades and bicycles out here.  Waldo seems to prefer these temperatures, compared to those of the summer, and he’s out front, gaily sniffing and moving sticks around.  We’ve been out here more than a thousand times in the past four years and yet, for both of us, there are new things to experience each time we walk.

Four years – it doesn’t seem that long.  I remember searching online for border collie puppies when I found Waldo.  He was such a little thing, just six weeks old, not yet old enough to leave Mom.  But I saw his picture, fell in love, and called to secure his purchase.  The breeder agreed to keep him for a few months, until I was nearer to retiring, although I did drive the seven hours it took to go visit with him once.  He was quite skittish and it took a lot of reassurance just to get him to walk on a leash.  How far we’ve come…

I did not get into this thing blindly.  I was intrigued with getting a border collie because of their reputed intelligence and relative ease of training.  I’ve had other dogs in the past and I thought that if I got a more intelligent dog, I might be able to bond with him more closely.  In some ways, that proved to be true; in others, not so much.  I really had no interest in getting a dog who did a lot of cute “tricks,” but I did want to be able to train him enough so that he would be safe, with direction, living amongst us humans and all of our dangerous appurtenances.

I knew, from my research, that Waldo would need a lot of activity.  One of the reasons I got him was that I needed a dog I had to walk so I would be forced to get my fat butt off my chair and get adequate exercise myself.  “Border collies do best when they have a job,” I was told.  Perhaps, but not every border collie born will end up being a sheep dog and I reasoned there had to be a way to arrange to get an adequate level of activity in the city.  I also knew Waldo and I would be suffering from an additional handicap – we would be living in a third-floor apartment.  Border collies are usually not good apartment dogs, they just need too much activity.  But, because I was going to retire, I figured I’d have the time to take him out often and that could be worked around.

In the end, I made many adjustments and Waldo made a lot of compromises. We worked out a routine where we walk at least six miles on the rail-trail, almost daily, and another one and a half miles, at least, around the apartment complex.  There have been times when we walk as much as sixteen miles on a single trek.  We came to this schedule through trial and error – discovering for ourselves what each of us could tolerate.  Dog trainers we worked with said that six miles a day was quite adequate for exercise, but Waldo would also need to engage his brain.  So, I got a twenty-six-foot-long training leash, allowing him to have enough room to trot along at will, wander off-trail a bit, to explore and sniff, and search out his universe on his own under his own direction.  This allows him to engage his brain, as well as his brawn, while we’re out walking.

We also play a number of games together.  Waldo is particularly partial to keep-away, tug-of-war and toss-the-stick.  He even, at times, likes to chase after a red laser pointer dot.  Fetch was something he was never much interested in.  At first, he’d play a little, then he would turn the game into keep-away and if I made him drop what he had, ball or stick, he would ignore it if I threw it.  He’d lay down and give me a “This is stupid.  You go get it,” look.  I am also sensitive to when he wants to go outside for a walk and indulge him when he asks.  I can easily do this because I’m almost always home with him.  I did have the foresight to put a dog-door in the slider on the balcony (a floor-to-ceiling insert the slider closes on, with a dog-door in the bottom) so he can be outside, on his own, when he wants and that helps.

I think I can accurately say, it is possible to have a well-adjusted, healthy, happy border collie live in an apartment in a city.  But I don’t think it would be wise to try if you had to go to work most days, for hours at a time, or weren’t willing to physically exert yourself quite a bit.  All in all, Waldo and I have worked things out pretty well.  I look up ahead and watch as Waldo trots along, sniffing at something I can’t see on the ground.  His tail is wagging, his ears are up and alert and he’s definitely engaged.

We are both quite happy.

Waldo now.

It’s a rainy day, no snow, in January!

We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.

-Barack Obama

From slabs of ice and temps in the negative regions, we go, in December, mind you, to temps in the mid-fifties with rain.    And now we’re in January and the temp is 34℉ and it’s raining again.  Rain.  December is supposed to be the month when Massachusetts gets most of its snow.  This year, what did we get?  Rain.  And more rain.  Gaia must be sicker than most of us realize.

It’s not raining hard today – really more of a drizzle.  Waldo and I, although wet, are not soaked.  There’s water running down the drainage trenches next to the trail, but it’s not spilling over onto the tarmac, like it does when it’s really pouring.  Waldo doesn’t seem to even notice, except, on rare occasion, when he shakes the rain off his sable coat.  Other life stirs in the damp mild temps.  Some grasses seem to have shaken off their hibernation as there are definitely dark green blades tucked in amongst the usual yellow-brown of winter sleep.  The garlic mustard is easier to find and the mosses are thick and fuzzy.  It’s wet and warm enough that the wooden fence posts and rails are green with algal growth too.  I wonder if these rousing living things are confused by the weather, or maybe they’re just taking advantage of what’s offered as they can.

Waldo and I don’t mind the rain.  We’ve been in worse and I have been in much worse.  And warmer rain too.   I remember once, when I was in Bangkok, Thailand, I was riding in a bus and it started raining.  The water was as warm as what you have in your shower.  I didn’t know that was possible, but Gaia will smash your preconceptions, given the chance.  Today, the rain is definitely not warm, but at least we’re not growing sheets of ice on us like we have in the past.  I’ll never forget watching icicles growing down from my hood as we walked along this same stretch of trail a couple of years ago.

We need this water, there was quite a drought this summer.  The problem is, when it comes down as rain, the water drains off into the ocean and is gone.  As snow, it sticks around for several months, only slowly releasing its moisture and slowly enough so the water can soak into the ground.  Fortunately, there is snow up in the hills, so maybe we’ll be okay this year.  And winter isn’t over yet.  These disturbed weather patterns certainly give strong immediate evidence for climate change.

I don’t understand how the deniers can continue to try to refute the facts of global warming.  But I guess, for thousands of years, there have been people denying what science tells us.  I’m reminded of Aristophanes’s, The Clouds:

Strepsiades: By the Earth! Is our father, Zeus, the Olympian, not a god?

Socrates: Zeus! what Zeus!  Are you mad?  There is no Zeus.

Strepsiades:  What are you saying now?  Who causes the rain to fall?  Answer me that!

Socrates: Why, these [the clouds], and I will prove it.  Have you ever seen it raining without clouds?  Let Zeus then cause rain with a clear sky and without their presence!

Strepsiades: By Apollo!  That is powerfully argued!  For my own part, I always thought it was Zeus pissing into a sieve…

[Source: Thomas West, translator, Four texts on Socrates, Cornell University Press]

There are, it would seem, even today, way too many Strepsiadeses walking around.  They may not think rain is Zeus-piss, but they still turn a deaf ear to what science has to say about our climate with an equally ridiculous prejudicial ignorance.

Waldo’s not worried about climate change.  Of course, he’s not significantly contributing to it either.  I wonder if he even notices the warming trend we’re experiencing.  His focus seems to be on finding the perfect stick (I recently decided to give him an Amerind name: Čháŋ WaktéktekA [Lakota], which roughly translates to “Stick Stalker”).  However, he, for sure, doesn’t do well when the temps get into the 80s, 90s and above in the summer.  He doesn’t have much choice; he just suffers along as best he can with whatever the day has to offer – as does the rest of nature.  We human beings can do something about it, though, and we’d better start doing it fast.

Well, Čháŋ WaktéktekA and I will be back here tomorrow, spending a few hours walking and stalking without significantly contributing to our carbon footprint.

Whatever the weather.

Running water where it is usually dry, no snow and no ice.

The long shadows of winter — even at midday.

Ice has a social life.  Its changeability shapes the culture, language and stories of those who live near it.

-Robert Macfarlane

The bomb cyclone hit the US, followed by the frigid temps of a polar vortex heading south.  Though western Mass got quite a bit of snow, all we got was rain, then the vortex brought with it temperatures down into the negative numbers.  I can dress for that, but Waldo can’t and I was worried about taking him for long walks.  In the past, when it’s been that cold, he’s had trouble with ice growing between his pads.  But there is no snow on the ground and that didn’t happen.  Just the same, I decided not to go for the rail-trail when it was that cold.  I needn’t have worried.  Waldo spent the entire day out on his throne, the balcony, keeping watch on his dogdom.

Today, it’s warmed up to around ten degrees and I decide to go for it.  My cheeks and forehead are a bit numb, but the rest of me, except my hands, are toasty.  My hands, I can easily deal with by alternating the leash with a warm pocket, except when I have to deglove to pick up what Waldo leaves behind.  Then they get very cold.  I keep an eye on Waldo, but he’s out prancing, sniffing whatever it is he can smell, and searching for stick upgrades.  I know he’s comfortable, not only by his eagerness to keep going, but also because, every once in a while, he drops back to where I am and pokes me with a stick.  He seems to think that’s strong temptation to get me to play with him.  I try to comply, but I’m not at all sure of the rules.  I do know it involves keep-away, then tug-of-war if I can grab the stick, followed by, if I win, a stick toss to somewhere within leash-length.  He’s having a good time.

We haven’t gone far and the path is blocked by a very thick chunk of ice.  It’s about ten or fifteen feet wide, too wide to step over, and it’s a good three inches thick.  It continues off-trail, so I have to cross the ice — very gingerly, but uneventfully.  Waldo didn’t try to avoid it and the cold didn’t seem to bother his feet, but he did slip and slide a little; his four-paw drive kept him upright, though.  The trail before and after the ice is clean and dry.  I know it wasn’t formed from the freezing of standing water because it’s in the middle of the path and stands up above the level of the tarmac.  It appears layered, as if a slowly moving shallow pool of water flowed out onto an already frozen sheet of ice, got stuck there, and then froze.  Something like that must have happened four or more times because there are that many layers.  As we walk along, we come across half a dozen similar glacial flows, so whatever caused them is not unique to one place.

I’ve never seen anything like it and I’m intrigued – I can’t help but wonder how they were formed.  During the rain, the temps were in the mid-fifties with strong winds.  Within twelve hours, the rain stopped and temps dropped to the negative single digits.  I know the freeze happened after the precipitation stopped, because there is absolutely no accumulation of snow.  So, somehow, the rain stopped, the temperature dropped and whatever standing water there was must have frozen.  Then flowing liquid water (which doesn’t freeze so easily), perhaps wind driven, must have accumulated on top of the ice where it stopped and froze.  Then the process repeated at least four times — sort of like how stalagmites and stalactites are formed.  Fascinating.

Waldo and I are intrepid walkers, for sure.  But we are not alone.  Despite the low temps, we pass several joggers and a few other walkers who aren’t inhibited by cold or ice.  There are no bikes or other dogs, though.  As we pass by, we say hello (Waldo usually has a hard time resisting a short greeting with wagging tail and gentle nuzzle) and everyone comments on what a nice day it is.  It’s a bit nippy, a bit blustery, but that only makes it different from the days before, not any less of a good day.  And we share amazement at the thick blocks of ice.

I pay close attention to the English ivy-covered tree as we pass.  I half-expected it to be withered and drained of green, but it’s not.  The leaves are just as plump and green as they were when the temperature was in the fifties.  The garlic mustard is still green too, although some of their leaves have curled up on themselves.  Some blades of grass and all of the moss is still green as ever, clearly ignoring the frigid cold. We didn’t see any squirrels, though, and what birds are left must have decided to spend the day at home.  But there are a few members of nature, including some humans and at least one dog, who are happy being outside, communing with Gaia, regardless of the weather.

And you never know what you’ll find along the way.

It’s colder than it looks…

English ivy adorned oak tree, mid-winter.

The Earth created magic to protect the magic that is the Earth.

-Sarah Warden

Today, I communed briefly with Gaia, and listened carefully to what she had to say, but she had no dramatic news to report, so it didn’t last long.  Winters are like that, for me anyway.  Nature slows to a crawl – what’s vibrant with life during the rest of the year is quietly slumbering during the frigid months.  Even the noonday sun only barely raises itself from the horizon, casting cold long shadows even when at its zenith.  One day seems so much like the last, and the next, that the season seems to last forever.  But one year is not like another.  Some years, I’m trying to walk with Waldo in a foot or more of snow.  This year, the ground is still snow-free, and the temperatures are in the low forties, yet it’s already the winter solstice.

I’ve noticed some surprising things because of the lack of snow.  One day, I’m walking along the rail-trail and I notice there are still a few small autumn olives sporting green leaves, then a hard freeze comes along, with temps in the high teens, and they seem to disappear.  The same thing with the small bunches of garlic mustard.  The temperature rises, a rain comes along, and low and behold, a few autumn olives with drooping leaves reappear and the garlic mustard pokes its leaves through overlying dead leaves.  Maybe it’s just that I haven’t noticed they were there because their numbers have decreased.  Except for the garlic mustard.  Just the other day, I didn’t see any, now there are places where it’s easy to find, not in great abundance, but it’s there.

This spring-like resurgence of leafy green has made me more observant.  Today, I notice a few fronds of intermediate wood fern poking out from beneath tawny fallen oak leaves.  Ferns in the last days of December.  Who’da thunk?  With all the rain we’ve gotten recently, and the warmer temperatures, the gametophytes of the mosses alongside the tarmac have grown tall (for them), giving them a thickened fluffy appearance.  Noticing all this heightens my curiosity and awareness.

Now what is this?  In the periphery of my vision, I spot a large mass of dark green.  It stands tall and is definitely not a conifer.  I move closer and stare in wonder.  Healthy dark green leaves of English ivy densely cover the bole and branches of a tall dead oak. The vine winds its way around the trunk and limbs of the tree like tinsel garlands surrounding a decorated Christmas tree.  Everything else around (except for the white pines) is beige and boney.  Yet here’s this vine, in the cold winter temperatures, sporting verdure the like of which I’ve only seen in the warmer months.  It boldly stands there in stark contrast to its surroundings and I’m in awe that I haven’t noticed it before.  Maybe all the rain we’ve had recently has infused it with new life, causing it to burst forth with plump foliage.

Waldo and I have been walking nearly daily on this trail for almost four years and yet this is the first time I’ve noticed anything like this.  It forces me to wonder just how observant I am.  Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also breeds ignorance – when I’m familiar with something, I tend to ignore it.  And yet, I know, from prior experience, each day out here, in any season, bears something new and different if I just look for it.

Waldo, of course, knows this well.  He is constantly trotting along with his nose less than an inch from the tarmac, seeking and, no doubt, finding new and interesting things to sniff.  And when he finds them, he spends long moments carefully smelling them out, and their surroundings, in order to discover all the nuance they have to offer.  I can tell he is truly fully engaged in the search.  Oh, he misses stuff too, not because he’s not paying attention, but because he’s so focused on what’s new right before his nose.  I don’t know, but I’d bet he’s sad about the lack of snow, though – he’s so enamored with rolling around in it and making snow doggies.

So, maybe my feelings about winter being merely a time when the natural world waits for spring is simply wrong.  I think it more likely that I’m suffering from seasonal complacency disorder and just miss a lot that’s happening.  There is a lot going on, it’s just not conspicuous, especially when much of it is buried under a thick blanket of snow.  Today, there’s no snow out here, so I can see it, I just have to look.  One thing for sure; I’m keeping my eye out for that dead tree and its English ivy tomorrow.

You know, Gaia is talking to me even when I’m not paying attention…

Garlic mustard, mid-winter.

There are green trees, but they’re mostly white pine.

If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.

-Buddha

Again, today, I’m going to make the effort to listen to what Gaia has to say.  She talks all the time, but I’m usually too busy ruminating over this or that to really pay attention.  Today, though, I vow I will.

Waldo and I are out on the rail-trail; it’s cold with temps in the high twenties, colder when the wind blows.  The skies are blue, nary a cloud in sight, which ensures little heat will remain down near the ground where we are.  It’s cold enough that the skin on my face gets a little numb.  I wear gloves, but they aren’t thick enough to keep my fingers warm for very long.  I leave one hand in the pocket of the parka I’m wearing and the other I use to hold Waldo’s leash handle.  When the unpocketed hand starts to ache from the cold, I switch them out, coiling the frozen one in a ball.  This lasts for fifteen minutes or so, then I have to exchange them again.  Everything else stays quite toasty, buried as it is under down and cloth.

Waldo is prancing around, seemingly undisturbed by the chill.  In fact, he seems to like this temperature.  When it gets below 10, he’s prone to get ice between his toes, forcing him to stop and bite at his feet.  I’ve never seen him shiver, but I do watch for that and other signs that he might be uncomfortable, like lying down and not wanting to continue.  Today, he seems to be in his element, happily sniffing, picking up sticks, and roaming around, looking for God knows what.

Around us, the tawny, spindly landscape remains deathly still, except for the few dead, shriveled leaves that still tenaciously hang onto their branches as they shudder in the breeze.  Even the autumn olive has given up the ghost – the only green left is from the white pines that are intermingled with the rest of life and are now clearly visible through the naked remains of the other plants.  The tarmac is covered with the remnants of a skiff of snow from the last storm.  Originally just deep enough to leave footprints, the subsequent thawing and freezing has produced an uneven patchwork of snow and ice that, in places, is difficult to navigate.  There are, as well, spots where the tarmac is dry and some that are slippery with black ice.  In the deep woods are places where fallen leaves peek through their white icy coverlet, giving the ground a mottled look.  In the distance, through stands of tree trunks and denuded brush, I can see patches of wind-blown beige fields not yet blanketed with deep drifts.

That’s the milieu.  I open up my perception to receive all this and whatever Gaia has to say.  I relax my mind, defocusing to the point where I don’t label, I don’t define, I don’t evaluate.  I’m simply here, taking it all in.  I don’t try to resist the cold, I don’t wonder how far we have yet to go, I don’t intellectualize what’s happening.  I just let be whatever is in my mind.  I just “listen.”

I can’t hold this mental posture for long, it fades in and out.  Most of my cognitive brain, I can shut off for short periods, but the labeling, defining and evaluating are so engrained in the way I habitually live and think, that I can only avoid them for seconds at a time.  But I can maintain a mental posture where I never go completely back to how I usually experience the world.  I do my best to just tread water in the middle of Gaia’s ocean, letting the waves of her discourse bob me around as she wills.

As a result, I not only experience what is happening at the moment, I also reexperience what’s happened in the past.  These aren’t memories; I don’t remember what happened, I experience it as if it were happening now.  It’s like what I’m experiencing is a spaciotemporal whole.  I’ve been cold like this before — skiing in the Uintah Mountains, or hiking at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, or walking to grammar school in the middle of winter.  One experience flows into another and into now as if it were all one.  I’m sensing the continuity of my experience of nature as it flows from past to future, beyond what I can conceptualize, without slicing it up into then and now.

All this produces a kind of precognitive, unemotional sense of the universe that is bigger than me, but of which I am a part.  There is a message there, but to try to put it into language would destroy its content.  What Gaia says, she says in subtle suggestions that are not chopped up into words, objectified into things, or conceptualized into discrete thoughts.  Her message is continuous, flowing and experiential.  I reach out and touch Gaia’s heart and she responds with a playful, tender, loving whisper that shimmers through my being.

I have to believe that Waldo communes more regularly than I with Gaia.  With his x-ray nose and his intense interest in everything that’s around him, how could he not?  And, although he does understand some language, I’ll bet his mind is not filled with a distracting, constant stream of language-based thought, leaving him more open to experience nature as it happens.  It makes me wonder what Gaia is telling him…

I have no doubt that there indeed does exist emergent properties of nature.  I also know, from personal experience, that nature does speak to us, if we would only listen.

And what she says is full of awesome, magical beauty.

Most of the forest are bones.

The rain has just started, more is coming.

Forever — is composed of Nows –

-Emily Dickinson

It’s wet and rainy today.  Not the kind of rain that comes down in sheets, soaks through my boots and clouds my glasses with wind-driven beads of water that run down the lenses, but more of a light drizzle that, over the two plus hours it takes us to do our trek, gets my rainsuit thoroughly wet, but I stay relatively dry.  Waldo’s hair is soaked to the skin, but he only shakes it off every half hour or so.  Visibility is just slightly impaired and the temperature is in the low fifties, so it’s not cold at all.  Except for the rare jogger, dog walker or dedicated exerciser out for their daily constitutional, we are alone.  Tuning out the spatter of raindrops on my clothes and ignoring the sight of the constantly falling misty rain, everything is remarkably still.  Insects have packed it in for the season, rabbits and squirrels are holed up somewhere dry and birds have either gone south or decided this isn’t the day to venture out for a flight.  I put my gait on automatic pilot and leave Waldo to do his Waldo thing at the end of the leash.  With nothing else to do, I can’t help it, my mind wanders and I’m soon thinking more about emergence.

I’m struck by an entertaining thought.  If human consciousness is the emergent property of lots of interacting neurons adapting to their milieu, what would the emergent property be, let’s call it the Uber mind, of lots of people interacting with one another?  I don’t think you could call this Uber a super-consciousness because that would suppose there would be significant overlap between what we experience as consciousness and what Uber experiences.  I would think it would be as difficult for us to imagine what Uber’s experience is like as it would be for a neuron to guess what our awareness is like.

The emergent quality of nature, let’s call her Gaia, might have qualities that are at least as difficult for us to understand.  In the movie, Avatar, the writers invented a guiding force of life, on the planet Pandora, they called Eywa.  The natives, the Na’vi, could speak directly to Eywa through the Tree of Souls – a tree that they could use to get “hardwired into” Eywa.  Here on Earth, we are all part of nature and we interact with all other parts of nature.  Maybe if we thought of Mother Nature as Gaia, something similar to Eywa (I’m sure that was intended by the writers), the paradigm shift would be insightful.  Maybe Gaia doesn’t have a human personality, or maybe she doesn’t have intelligence, the way we think of intelligence, but she does “speak” to us and we don’t need a Tree of Souls to “hear” her.  All we have to do is pay attention.

I open my awareness to the world around me; today, the slanting rays of a winter sun ooze diffusely through clouds, mist and the bare branches of trees, to shine weakly on dead leaves that cover the ground.  Looking at all this in an unfocused sort of way, I can get a sense of something bigger, Gaia in her entirety, rather than my usual narrow perception of nature being merely a collection of trees, bushes and so on.  Gaia “speaks” to me as obliquely and indirectly as the winter sun shines on the ground.  If I’m willing to still my constantly running mind and my never-ending internal dialog, and just listen, look, feel, taste, and smell what’s happening in the moment, I can sense how she affects me.  I feel a cold breeze chill and numb my face, see the tan and beige sleeping forest and fields with their skeletal dormant remains, listen to the droplets of drizzle hit my rainsuit, smell the musty, rotting dead leaves at my feet and I react to it all.  My reactions are more feelings than thoughts, something precognitive, yet profoundly moving.  The texture of what I experience is constantly shifting, flowing, like a river.  It’s nuanced and subtle, yet prolific and deep.  If I dwell there, in the world of how I feel being emersed in Gaia, rather than run away to somewhere more intellectual, I learn something important from what she “tells” me.  Something that cannot be expressed in language because it is precognitive, yet has a profound impact on my experience.

Waldo breaks my reverie with a gentle tug on the leash.  We’re almost back to the car.  I turn to him and report, “Well done, Waldo.  Another day, another six miles.”  He wags his tail and makes for the car and home.  Uber or no, Gaia or no, we are here on the rail-trail.

Being aware of that is what’s most important.

At first, it’s more of a mist than a drizzle.