Walking with Waldo

Oh, how we miss being out here…

To be human is to have a collection of memories that tells you who you are and how you got there.

-Rosecrans Baldwin

We had a respite from the heat and humidity for about three days, with temps in the very lovely high 60s, and then it all came back as if the cooler days were meant as a prank.  This entire past week has been untrekable.  Waldo and I have had to stick to our local environs.  We could have shortened our walks on the rail trail, even in the high heat, limited them to a mile or so.  But it’s been so bad that even after taking Waldo for a fifteen-minute, half-mile poop and pee, I’ve soaked my shirt in sweat.  Waldo romps around like it doesn’t bother him, but when we get back to the apartment, he crashes on the floor, panting like a steam locomotive climbing Mount Everest, with his tongue lolled all the way out.  Only after he recovers a bit does he get up and drink water.

All this heat is causing me to think some more about that trip to Agra India I mentioned in the last blog.  I was twelve and with my family as we traveled to Ethiopia, where we would live for 18 months.  The plan was to go by way of the orient and return through Europe.  We left the US from San Francisco, stopped at Honolulu, then Tokyo and Bangkok before we flew into Delhi.  For a twelve-year old, the culture shock was stimulating and I developed a yen for adventure that lingers on today.  Each day, I was a stranger exploring a strange land.  And it has left an impression on me that cannot be erased, even if I wanted it to.

Sometimes, what I witnessed was shocking and life-altering.  I remember, on that drive from Delhi to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal, seeing people so poor that they slept in the drainage ditch alongside the road with nothing more for shelter than a large leaf of some sort.  At twelve years old, that wasn’t something I could quickly assimilate and it left a lasting impression.  Other things were not so confounding, but left a mark just the same.

As we drove the many hours to our destination, our driver asked us if we knew where the expression okay came from.  It turns out, okay is universally understood and used in most, if not all, cultures.  We said we didn’t and he explained that he heard that it came from an American president who was poorly educated.  When bills came across his desk for his signature, he didn’t want to reveal his ignorance, so, instead of writing “all correct”, which he didn’t know how to spell, he abbreviated it, O.K., for “Oll Korrect.”

I suppose the driver meant it as a joke, but still, some sixty-four years later, I remember it and was curious enough about the origins of okay to Google it.  It turns out that the driver was correct, up to a point.  The most accepted theory of where okay came from is from Boston, Massachusetts, of all places, in the late 1830s.  It turns out that it was a fad, at that time, to playfully misspell phrases like “oll korrect.”  This was then abbreviated O.K. and later spelled phonetically as “okay.”  There is a record of its use in print in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839.  The meme reached national prominence during the 1840 presidential campaign of Martin Van Buren in 1840.  He was also known as “Old Kinderhook,” and O.K. was used as a campaign slogan, with a double entendre.

This anecdote is interesting, but more than that, I find it striking that some seemingly trivial event that happened to me in my childhood left a deep enough footprint in my psyche to last into my seventies.  It was strong enough that I was curious to take action on it sixty-four years later.  I can’t help but wonder the extent to which the person who I am today was shaped and molded by the tiniest of events in my distant past.  It’s not just the big things that leave a mark.  In fact, I’ve come to believe that it’s the little things that happen to us all the time that really matter.  That’s where the rubber meets the road.

These days, when out walking with Waldo in the woods, I pay attention to the seemingly insignificant things in life.  I converse with Emmy birds, listen to the chattering of squirrels and the rustling of leaves in the wind.  I won’t have sixty-four more years to carry these things with me, but I do have the rest of my life.

And they make my life what it is.

…being bathed in the natural world.

Home. It may not look it, but it is hot.

Lord, whatever it is you’re baking outside, it’s done!

-Anon

A heat dome up and squatted on a good portion of the US, including Marlborough, for the past few days.  The heat index is as high as 104℉ and the lows never get below the high 70s — too hot to walk Waldo in his thick sable birthday suit, even if we get up before dawn.  So, we’ve been staying inside in the AC, with only short poop and pee jaunts out into the furnace.

When I grew up, in the days when, in the winter, we had to walk to school in a blizzard, a mile each way, uphill both ways, we didn’t have AC.  It existed, but not for the common man is his vaunted castle.  In cars, air conditioning was by Armstrong – you had to crank down the windows by hand and you were very careful what you put your bare skin on.  I can only wonder how the border collie breed survived.

I’ve been in hotter conditions.  I can remember, when I was twelve, standing in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, and the temperature was 114℉ in the shade.  And there was no shade nearby.  There was a shallow reflecting pool of water.  I was tempted to jump in and go as deep as I could, clothes and all.  I realized I would need a scuba tank to stay underwater, and that created an itch that I finally scratched in college — learning to scuba dive.

Then, there was the time I traveled back from Djibouti to Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, on a third-class train.  Not too far away is the Danakil Depression (maximum temperature measured there is 131℉), one of the hottest places on Earth.  The train was extremely slow – it stopped at every village with more than two tukuls (small waddle and daub round huts with thatched roofs).  The trip lasted a good twelve hours, we had no water, and by the time we got to Dire Dawa, I was very dehydrated.  The better part of wisdom told me not to trust the water, so I drank Coke instead.  After 8, 8-ounce bottles of the stuff, I finally broke into a sweat.  Since then, I reach for a nice cold Coke when I’m hot and dry.

There were many other times that I suffered through hot times because I had to.  I was younger then and I could abuse my body more intensely and not suffer any long-term repercussions.  These days, now that I’m in my mid-70s, I usually prefer a less… adventurous approach.  I’ll stay inside in the AC, thank you very much, and suffer the consequences to my bank account.  I get no argument from Waldo, either.

When it’s nice and cool outside, Waldo will go out to his balcony throne and spend the entire day out there, surveying his dogdom and giving out requisite dicta.  He’ll come in if he’s thirsty, or hungry, or needs to do a bathroom loop around the property, but, other than that, he’s ensconced on his seat of power.  In this heat, he goes out, does a woof or two, just to let the world know he’s there and watching, then comes back in and lies down.

Sometimes, he’ll go out for a little longer and lie down under the air conditioner.  Condensed water drips down on his fur and cools him off a bit, but not for long in these temperatures.  He also likes to lap up the water that collects in puddles below the AC.  I try to keep an eye on how much he’s drinking and make sure he has enough, but I can’t.  He won’t drink out of the bowl I keep for him inside.  I have no idea why that water isn’t good enough, but, apparently, outside water, that doesn’t come from a tap, is better.  The only way I know he’s getting enough to drink is by the fact that he has to go out and pee on a regular basis.

When we do go out for Waldo’s biological needs, we do our regular 15 minute, ½ mile loop.  Once back in the apartment, Waldo lays on his side on the bare floor, with his tongue stretched all the way out, panting fervently (I’m dripping with sweat).  After he cools off, he rolls over onto his belly, puts his chin on his paws and sighs.  There is no frenzied demonstration of pent-up border-collie energy that’s in emergent need of release.  It’s just too damn hot.  When he was younger, there might have been a pause of a half-hour or so, then he’d be ready to go again, no matter the weather.  Now, he’s a bit more sedate.

You could say that I am better off in my 70’s in the 2020s, than I was in my 20’s in the 1970s (or before), if for no other reason than because of the omnipresent AC.  Still, there are places I like to be, like Switzerland, where it still gets as hot as 90℉ and no one has home AC.  And you know what?  If given the chance, I’d still go to Agra and the Taj Mahal and take that slow third-class train through the deserts of East Africa and enjoy it.  But I think I’d be a little more aggressive about finding some nice cool place to rest afterward.

The good news?  Tomorrow the forecast is for a temperature of 69℉ all day long.

Assebet River Rail Trail, here we come!

Clear skies, hot temps!

“This is what democracy looks like.

You may never know what results come from your action.  But if you do nothing, there will be no result.

-Mahatma Ghandi

Today, Waldo and I are going on a different kind of walk.  We’re going to a “No Kings” demonstration in Marlborough, to be held at Union Common in the middle of downtown.  The Common is a small patch of grass and trees on a gently sloping hill, about a block square.  The “Union” part of its name doesn’t reference the Civil War North, but rather the “Union Congregational Church,” formed by the merger of two church societies in 1835.

Even so, the name has additional meaning because “John Brown’s Bell” is located in a tower monument there, on the corner of Bolton and Main Streets.  The bell was originally installed in the Harper’s Ferry Armory, then in the state of Virginia.  It was in the armory when John Brown took it over and tried to foment his slave rebellion in 1859.  Later, in 1861, the bell was “liberated” by members of Company I, 13^th Massachusetts infantry.  It’s said that the removal of the bell was inspired by a desire for a war souvenir and, by the way, Marlborough needed a fire bell.  Some say it is the second most important bell in American history, after the Liberty Bell.

The demonstration starts at 11 AM.  It’s chilly and a little wet.  There’s a light rain falling, really more like a heavy mist, and most of the 400 or so people who show up are wearing some kind of rain gear or carrying an umbrella.  I’m just wearing the light jacket I use when walking Waldo and a leather cap.  It doesn’t take too long and both Waldo and I are a bit damp, but we’re not soaked

We park in a lot about a half block away and are soon surrounded by people lining both sides of Bolton and Main Streets.  People are shouting slogans, like, “Hey, hey!  Ho, ho! Donald Trump has got to go!” and, “This is what democracy looks like!” while waving rainbow and US flags.  The chanting is being led by a young woman shouting into a megaphone, but its volume is turned down pretty low.  Still, the crowd is quite noisy and it makes Waldo a little nervous.  His tail is tucked between his legs and it’s obvious, to me, that he’s thinking, “What the hell?”  He doesn’t startle, whine, or shy when cars and trucks go by blaring their horns, but he doesn’t like it either.  We make our way through the throng and come across some people handing out rainbow and US flags.  I take one of each and stick them in Waldo’s collar so they stick up above his head.  He is now a member of the resistance!

We move through the tightly packed crowd – I think it makes Waldo a bit more comfortable to keep walking.  He weaves around people’s legs and they are appreciative of our presence, as is shown by pets and pats on a dog who is, by now, somewhat wet.  Some are even moved to take his picture.  Everyone is centered about the intersection, just under the bell, and spread out down both streets.  The streets themselves are clear for traffic and it’s pretty obvious that many of the cars that pass us by do so in support of what’s going on.

After a bit, just to put in our daily distance, we leave the crowd and meander around the periphery of the common.  At the top of the hil a police car is parked  with a single officer as occupant.  We say hello as we pass and he seems pretty bored by the duty he has pulled.  There is another policeman at the intersection, in the middle of the crowd, who looks just as disinterested.  That’s a far cry from the protests I remember as a college student back in the 1970s.  I offer to go get the man a cup of coffee from one of the nearby restaurants, but he says, no thanks, he’s all set.  I felt a little like how the hippies must have felt, back in the day, who stuffed flowers in the barrels of the weapons of National Guardsmen.

All in all, everything was peaceful.  The only dissent that appeared was toward the end when a burly man raised his middle finger to us as he walked by.  We, the crowd, ignored him and two policemen took him aside and spoke gently to him, trying to keep things deescalated.  It worked.  Soon after, having spent two hours out on the street, Waldo and I went home to dry out.

For me, being out there was not a way of venting frustration, but an effort to take part in showing the world that there are a great number of citizens who are not happy with the way things are going down.  I can only hope it helps.  Today’s walk wasn’t quite as long as our usual daily trek and it was a bit nerve-wracking for Waldo.

But maybe we did something good.

Waldo in full patriotic regalia.

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

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

-Marcus Aurelius

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Helen Keller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later on, even the sky is black.

On the railroad bed.

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

-John Muir

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s a good thing.

The sugar maple sap collection system.

Things are getting greener.

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

-Patrick Foley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Waldo and I have found our niche.

This is where we belong.

C’mon, you know what I want…

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

-Barbara Kingslover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Above all, he is my friend.

…It’s not rocket science, you know.

Lesser celandine is thriving.

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

-Basho

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that is plenty.

There’s a lot of ground ivy too.

Sometimes it’s hot…

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

-Ingred Bergman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…sometimes it’s not.