Stopping by Woods

Yesterday before dark I drove to my trailhead at the Virginia Lakes, just to make sure I could find it and the roads weren’t closed.  It was quiet and cold; the snow soaked up all sound.

I wasn’t in all my cold-fighting gear – I had on only a pair of Carhartts, a fleece pullover, a jacket and a baseball cap – but the cold was intimidating.  16°F, according to the truck thermometer, and I could hear the wind tearing around the camper.  I got out to find where the trail started.

The snow was ankle-deep, and the sun had already sunk behind the high hills that seal these lakes from the outside world.  In shadow, I looked for the trail under the snow.  It started by an outhouse, an odiferous long-drop facility that I hurried by.  Duke tarried at the smells left by visitors past.  He paused to add his own olfactory signature to the registry of guests.

I walked down a small hill then around a curve toward the evergreen woods.  The trail circled the lake, which lay like a serene mirror amid the formidable hillsides in which it was nestled.  My boots squeaked in the snow.  The lake reflected the light and dark world around it, brilliant white snow on level ground, dark rock where the hillsides were too steep for snow to remain.  Dark evergreens laden with snow awaited my entrance like silent sentinels of the Sierras.  Wind swept across the snow and stirred flakes from the boughs of trees.  The cold hurt my ears.  I looked back for Duke.

I saw him through some bare aspen branches, circling the outhouse with his nose to the ground.  Periodically he paused to release a stream into the snow.  As I watched, Duke completed his duties and stood near the point where I’d left the outhouse, ears perked, nose in the air.  He moved his nose side to side in the air.  Looking for me.  He took a few steps and sniffed in another direction.

I remembered when I was a child when my father and I would go walking in the woods.  Sometimes Dad hid from me, and for a few moments I was alone in the wilderness.  I didn’t know where I was, or how to get back, or how to survive out there.  I was scared.  I’d look up the trail, down the trail, into the forest around me, fast glances in building fear.  But before my fear grew to terror Dad would emerge, all smiles and hair-tousling.  He knew where we where, how to get back, and what to do.

I called Duke to me and he ran down the trail.  I scratched his head and thought, this time it’s just me.

POSTSCRIPT.  Right now, I am backpacking in the Sierras.  I will probably be gone on that backpacking trip for a week or more, so this blog entry is one that I prepared ahead of time and scheduled to post in advance.  I’ll start writing “live” posts again when I’m back to my truck and computer.  While I’m gone, there will be no new blog entries for Saturday or Sunday.