Santa Fe and the Pleasure of Flat Hikes

Four days into my vacation at our recently built small house SE of Santa Fe, and hopefully getting into a pace where I spend less time on work email and more on sitting out on the east deck in the early morning cool, sipping coffee and watching the hummingbirds with binoculars. I think that they are broad-tails, with deep green back; the majority would be females, though, without the scarlet neck. Most of the other birds seem to be some variety of sparrow. Our land and the surrounding Galisteo Basin Preserve is beautiful, and there are lots of trails on the ridges and in the basin; mostly more or less level after going down into it (and, of course, back up). Have done many of them, and on Friday night, when I arrived, we joined a group for a geology talk and hike describing the layers from a really long time ago to as recently as 45 million years ago!

There is a temptation, though, to do mountain hikes, covered in woodland, to beautiful streams, so we did one on Sunday, the “Borrego Loop” off Hyde Park Road (which runs NE from Santa Fe to the ski area). Much of the Borrego Trail is downhill through forests of Ponderosa pine and tall aspens and some spruce and fir, down to the Tesuque Creek; the segment of Windsor Trail which forms the base of the triangle runs more down along the creek, and the Bear Wallow trail back is, thus, uphill. Close to 8000 feet and 36 hours from my baseline 400 feet in KC, it took a lot out of me! The book says a 760 foot gain, but I don't know if that is net or gross -- a lot of down also! I was ready for lunch (lovely) and a nap. Well, I’m almost always ready for a nap. That’s how I know it’s vacation! We’d done this before, with my sister and brother-in-law, in the snow of winter. Mountains have the advantage, compared with canyons, of being down on the way back, this one was a little different for hiking in the mountains. I also note that the book doesn't seem to care too much about total elevation gain; if it is not too steep and the trail is in good shape, it is "easy", as was this one.

This morning got up early to see the sunrise, despite having been up late seeing La Traviata at the  gorgeous outdoor Santa Fe Opera last night, have breakfast and hang around for the guys who work for the builder to get our eastern door open before going on the morning hike.

The house is glass on 3 sides (except north) but none of the windows open so the breeze comes through with the east and west doors open. The wind is from the west, so can blow the east door (hung inside) closed, so we had two rubber doorstops in it. A big enough gust came, however, to slam it closed hard, with the doorstops wedged into what should be a tiny potential space between metal door and sill, making it impossible to open. They used a couple of prybars to lift it from inside enough to pull the doorstops out from outside.

There is a trail along the railroad tracks just north of here; they run (and people bike it) into Santa Fe to the northwest; there is a tourist train, but also the Southwest Limited runs through Lamy, NM en route from Chicago to LA. Lamy is the closest stop to Santa Fe, so maybe there are a different set of tracks heading out of it to Albuquerque. Pat just took it from KC to Lamy overnight last week, but, of course, didn’t stay on to see where the tracks go this side of town. Anyway, there is a barbed wire fence along the tracks making it hard to get to overland, but the other night we discovered a trail that starts off the road across from us and winds through the desert to the tracks and an opening in the fence, where the bikers and hikers (us) can get through. Lovely walk; took the hiking poles even though I didn’t need them for balance on a basically level walk but it is apparently more exercise since you use your arms. Then walking along the rail trail, mostly right alongside, some up and downs where the tracks go through a narrower area, and some (for fun) walking along the rails (there I did use the poles for balance). Someone has put birdhouses all along the fence line, and at one point we came across a large patch of  squash plants; blossoms but no fruit yet, and presumably, given the location, volunteers. The tracks go over a very pretty wooden bridge over a wash, and eventually cross US-285. There we turned south (using the poles as leashes for the dogs) a short ways to our own road and back about a mile and a half.

I notice, walking back the mile or so along the road in the direction we usually walk out on (coming back on a higher trail), two things. First, it is mostly uphill; going on an easy downhill is never so obvious. Second, there are a lot more mature piñon pines here than farther down the road, for some reason. At 6700 feet, our trees are almost all juniper and piñon, unlike the Ponderosa and aspen of the higher elevation, and lots of the piñon had died from bark beetle, drought making the trees’ defense (coating them in sap) more difficult. Over the last few years we’ve seen more piñon coming back, often in the shelter of protective junipers, but down the road there must be a microclimate that has had them surviving. I cut across our land, looking down because ground-hugging prickly pear look a lot like the other vegetation until you get close, and I see a tiny, one-inch high, hedgehog cactus. All the other cacti are prickly pear and cholla so it is a lovely surprise.

By now, it is getting warm, but it has been a lovely hike, and I’m not completely wiped out by climbing up and down. There is a lot to be said for level hikes!

Less Fauna at the Lake Fort Scott: Is it the hunting?

I live in Kansas City, but have a cabin 90 minutes south on Lake Fort Scott. It is pretty and peaceful most of the time. It is not always quiet, as there are frequently power boats going by pulling water skiiers or folks (mostly kids) hanging on to a water-couch (??) or speeding to a corner where they can fish quietly with the electric trolling motor, or in the case of jet-skis, simply running around in circles creating noise and wake. And there is some building, and folks mowing the grass. It is nicest during the week (if you can get away) or before Memorial Day or after Labor Day, when there are fewer people and boats.

So I like taking my kayak out early, before the power boats get busy, and paddling the shore, looking for wildlife. I’m not a birder or wildlife biologist so I don’t know everything I see, but do know I see deer, and otters, and minks, and lots of birds and ducks. Great blue herons, and sometimes green herons and wild turkey and “our” osprey (which is not supposed to live in Kansas).

But not so much this year; instead of at least 5 or 6 great blues on a paddle down the length of the lake, I’m happy to see one, and its way down at the end. For the first time this year, they allowed hunting along the shores of the lake (“only” shotgun and bow, a relief, not deer rifles whose bullets can travel a half-mile). There wasn’t a whole lot, I think, because there are plenty of other places to hunt around here, and it is pretty clear that the decision was made for primarily political (“we believe in hunting!”) reasons. So, maybe it was the hunting this winter and spring that scared them off; even though it is summer now and there is no hunting, I guess it could have disrupted their nesting season. Maybe not. Maybe global warming is coincidentally having its impact this year. Or something else. I don’t know.

Still, it’s sad. There is a lot to be said for the lake, and beauty, and quiet, are a big part of it. And, with the shotguns booming, the “off season” will not be so “off”. And I am less likely to see a big flock of white pelicans resting in the middle of the lake during their fall migration. And see fewer birds and animals in the summer.

Or maybe I just need to get up even earlier.

TV Westerns without Women

When I was a child in the 1950s (and probably into the early 1960s), there were a lot of “action/adventure” TV shows for children that had only men, no women.  So I guess they were mostly meant for boys. There were a few shows that stood out for featuring strong women (notably, and beloved by my sisters, “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle”, meant to be comparable to Tarzan and certainly a forebear of “Xena, Warrior Princess”. Many of these shows had strong, single men (bachelors or widowers, usually) with a single son, or perhaps ward. “Ward” was an odd term; it had no meaning in our regular lives, but we were familiar with it from DC Comics, as it described similar relationships there (Batman and Robin, of course; also Green Arrow and Speedy and others). It is obvious that there are many implications to these shows regarding gender roles, child rearing, sexual identity, and the role of women; however, I am not going to provide explicit analysis of these themes, which are probably best done by those with scholarly credentials. I am pretty much just going to share memories (with occasional help from Wikipedia for names and dates).

Among these shows were “Fury” (1955-60) with Peter Graves as Jim Newton, and his adopted son Joey, played by Bobby Diamond, “The Rifleman”  (1958-63) with Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain (the kid, Mark played by Johnny Crawford, was, in a rare twist, actually his son), with the adults actually parenting as well as providing role models. Two others that stand out in my memory are “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin” (1954-59) and “Circus Boy” (1956-58), where the person responsible for the child was the hero, but most of the actual parenting care was done by someone else, an older, lower-status member of the organization. In “Rin Tin Tin” it was Sgt. Biff O’Hara, played by Joe Sawyer, in “Circus Boy”, Joey the clown played by Noah Beery, Jr. These men provided a caretaker role for the boys (both were adopted orphans, Cpl. Rusty, played by Lee Aaker in “RTT”, and Corky, played by future-Monkee Mickey Dolenz, in “Circus Boy”). At the time I perceived this role as “maternal” but in reality was just “parental”, while Lt. Rip Masters and ringmaster Big Tim Champion (what names!), played respectively by James Brown and Robert Lowery performed their handsome, lean-jawed, leader of men activities. The similarity of these two shows was quite obvious to me even as a child; they were carbon copies in different settings.

These men, Sawyer’s O’Hara and Beery’s Joey, were definitely men, both worldly wise and wise in terms of giving advice to the boys worthy of June Cleaver. They  also filled the role of comic-relief sidekick that was a staple of Westerns (movies as well as TV shows), including Andy Devine’s Jingles on “Wild Bill Hickok” (1951-58) opposite Guy Madison, Pat Buttram on “Gene Autry” (1950-56) , Leo Carrillo’s Pancho on “The Cisco Kid” (1950-56) opposite Duncan Reynaldo (in its own twist, notable because Cisco, the hero, carried only one gun while the sidekick, Pancho, carried two!), and Pat Brady in “Roy Rogers” (1951-57). The latter, of course, even had a woman, Roy’s wife Dale Evans who rode her horse, Buttermilk, alongside Roy and Trigger, while Pat followed in his jeep, Nellie Belle. Of course, I always got the Pats, Brady and Buttram, confused.

Obviously, the tradition of stories-for-boys-without-significant-female characters goes far back before these shows, to radio, film and novels well back into the 19^th century at least, with swashbuckling heroes. Occasionally, notably in Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”, there is even a boy who is himself at the center of the story, perhaps making these a little more accessible than the similar-but-no-boy classics of Dumas and Sabatini. There may be nothing significant in the trope I noted so long ago of the sidekick-cum-mother, although it appears in the comics, where Alfred the butler plays this role for Batman and Robin.

 And, somewhat later, in “Bonanza” (1959-73), an “adult” TV Western of the 1960s (a group that also included “Maverick”, “Gunsmoke” (with Peter Graves’ brother James Arness), “Have Gun, Will Travel”, “Cimarron”, “Rawhide”, and “Sugarfoot”), Lorne Greene’s Ben Cartwright has three sons (Pernell Roberts’ Adam, Dan Blocker’s Hoss, and Michael Landon’s Little Joe), from three different mothers, all conveniently passed on to both not be present in the show and meet the requisite morality of sequential legal monogamy (each passing before Ben married the next and sired another son). Later the short-lived “Yellow Rose” also had three sons by different mothers (David Soul’s Roy, Edward Albert’s Quisto, and Sam Elliott’s Chance McKenzie), but the patriarch was only married to the mother of Roy. And of course, to Cybill Shepherd’s character, who also had affairs with all of them. There was also a kid, Roy’s son, and humorously Shepherd’s step-grandson. It was, I have to admit despite having had a crush on Shepherd since she was on the cover of “Seventeen”, a pretty bad show that lasted only one season, 1983-84.

 

OK, enough memories. I could post lots of pictures, but I think I’ll just stick with one. The anomaly, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. It had its origins in films and pulp novels, and was resurrected more recently, but the one that sticks in mind, and I am sure that of my sisters, is Irish McCalla in the TV show. Oh, and maybe Noah Beery and Mickey Dolenz from Circus Boy.

Les Miserables: not just a good show, but a really important theme

I saw the film Les Misérables recently. I liked it. I acknowledge that it was too long, and that the actors in it were not chosen for their singing voices. I even thought that the opera-style everything-is-sung-even-dialog was ok. I suppose I would have been less surprised by the latter, and maybe even more intolerant of the former (the singing) had I been one of the 60 million or so people who had seen the musical on stage, but I was not. I was familiar with the story, though I am certain I never read the entire 1500 pages (Cliff’s Notes, maybe? or "Classics Comics"?), and I had seen previous film versions.

My favorite is the one with Jean-Paul Belmondo, updated to take place in WW II, from 1995. I have always like Belmondo, but tended to think of him as the lean hero of his youth; to see him as the big, handsome older man in his 60s (he was born in 1933) was great. And it seemed more plausible that he was able to lift the cart off the trapped man than Hugh Jackman, even though Belmondo was much closer to what Jean Valjean’s actual age would have been. 

The reason that updating the Belmondo film to WW II was fine was the same reason I liked the recent movie: that the social and political issues it addresses are timeless. Les Misérables, book, musical or film, is not about the music but about the oppression of people – mainly poor people – by the rich and powerful and their minions. It is a profoundly political movie, and to see it and to not understand that would be, well, something I don’t understand. It is not just about the nobility and heroism of one man, who was imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving nephew and then becomes reborn and redeemed (did he have to be redeemed?) by a kindly monsignor, and his future works, which included sparing the life of his life-long adversary Javert when he had the chance to kill him. 

It is not about religion. It is about the ever-present possibility of the people rising up to free themselves of the yoke of tyranny as much as the tyrants continue to be able to continue to return to power. When Anatole France wrote in “The Red Lily” in 1894 that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread,” he is both thinking of Hugo and commenting on profound injustice of the social order. Les Misérables takes place between 1815 and 1832. The French Revolution has come, and gone, as has Napoleon, but there is still a monarchy, and an aristocracy, and brutal oppression of the poor and repression of those who rise against the powerful.

Kind of like today. When banks are too big to fail, when millions of Americans have lost their jobs and homes and the banks like JP Morgan Chase, bailed out by our taxes, records a record profit of $21 billion, and their CEO is proud of it when he should be in prison. When corporations seek to be judged solely on how much profit they make, rather than whether in doing so it makes the world a better place. In America, we support capitalism and for-profit corporations, but we should not be supporting rapacious profit making, profit making that depends on destroying so many people’s lives. 

In Kansas, Governor Sam Brownback proposes to make up the enormous budget deficit caused by the tax cuts he pushed through last year by “growing the economy”. This is dubious and uncertain enough in itself, but this is also his solution to meeting the health needs of the people he will not expand Medicaid to cover: they will get jobs. Except that the kind of jobs they get don’t usually come with health insurance, and Brownback would be the last person to require them to do so. The goal should not be to grow the economy so that some people can make most of the money, it should be to grow the economy to be able to make people’s lives better.  In my “Medicine and Social Justice” blog from November 3, I quoted Greek physician Alex Benos saying ““Health and health care are not commodities that exist to drive the economy. They are among the social goals which we have an economy to achieve.”

The catchphrase of the French Revolution was “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité -- Liberty-Equality-Fraternity. I recently purchased a roll of stamps, and the familiar flag stamp has had added to it “Freedom, Equality, Justice (each on every third stamp). The difference in the third one is instructive. Justice is good, and is important, and certainly was absent in France both before their revolution of 1789 and in the years depicted in Les Misérables. Sure, in the US we don’t say “fraternity” in this context, but there could be a similar word, like “brotherhood”. But it is not the word, it is the concept. It is the concept of social responsibility, of caring about others, about a “we are in this together” attitude that does not characterize American society. If it did, we would not tolerate people being without access to health care, or civilians carrying assault weapons, or ever increasing percentages of our national wealth being in the hands of the top <1%.

In the Hooper film, the final scene is after Valjean’s death. There has been a lot of church in the movie; in addition to the good monsignor who tells the police that he has gifted Valjean with the silver he has stolen, creating the transformation of Valjean from an amoral victim to a hero, later he and his “daughter”, Cozette, are hidden from the police in a convent. He dies in a church, with Cozette’s dead mother, Fantine, coming for him in a most mystical way. A lot of church and a lot of religion. And yet, that final scene does not show Valjean in a heaven of clouds, harps and angels with wings. The heaven he goes to is the revolution, all the people who have died in the movie and hundreds more massed on an enormous barricade, many more than were in the actual battle in the film. They are there, they are militant, and though they have been beaten are singing about liberty.

The fight will not be easy, the oppressor has many weapons on his side, you may be killed in the battle, but it is the good fight, the fight for what is right. This is the true message of Les Misérables.

It's too cold for you in Santa Fe! You'd hate it!

It’s cold out here southeast of Santa Fe, much colder than in Kansas City. Or, for that matter, Wichita, Liberal, Guymon, Dalhart or even Tucumcari, all of which towns I drove through, accompanied by Yonkel and Fry (neither of whom, it turns out, drive). There is snow on the ground from snows a couple of days ago, and the last leg of the trip, 40 miles up US 285 from I-40, was somewhat slowed by blowing and drifting snow (hey, the Galisteo Basin is a BASIN, flat, like high plains). Temperatures at night are in the teens, and in the 30s in the day. And it supposed to snow some more tomorrow or the next day. So stay in your nice balmy places further south or at lower elevation. You probably wouldn’t like it here.

On the other hand, there is the incredibly beautiful thing. I see great expanses of conifers (mostly juniper, but the piñons are beginning to return) white expanses, mountains in the (not too far off distance). And, of course, since we are not in Santa Fe, and you are frolicking in the warm weather, not a person around. I did drive to Eldorado for gas and groceries yesterday, but certainly not all the way (15 minutes) to Santa Fe, and today and probably tomorrow will stay here. I’ll go into town when Pat and the others get here, closer to Christmas.

We went for a lovely walk this morning through the snow, to the “back 40” (OK, it’s not 40, but it’s enough) to see the views over the Galisteo Basin. Fry is loving it; good old Yonkel stays closer to be near me. The black canvas duster with the sheepskin lining that Pat hates turns out to be perfect for keeping the wind out (oh, yeah, there’s wind too. Stay in Memphis). As long as your feet, head and ears are covered, the walk is great. Yonkel is barking at something I cannot see outside, but not too much last night. It was a “2 dog night” and they didn’t get up much.

I did, though. I opened my eyes around midnight and the eastern sky was full of stars. Got a little dressed and went out on the deck; no clouds in that direction, and so many stars I could barely find Orion in the middle of it all; most of the time, even down at the lake (and certainly in KC) that is all you can find. Among them, some planets, probably changing through the night. Straight east the Dog Star, Sirius, shining on my dogs, and right above the bright star Aldebaran from Taurus (they would have barked at that). This morning Sirius is replaced by the Morning Star, Venus. I couldn’t, of course, take pictures of the stars at night – it’s only a cell phone! – so I will share a couple of others, of the sunrise this morning, and of the reflected sunset on the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the northeast last night. I can’t write for long; the sun will soon be streaming into the “darkest” part of the house; the computer has been unusable in the main room since 7 am. It may be cold, but the sun is shining bright!

I guess I’ll just have to put on my cross-country skis and go see how the skiing is along the road. And then maybe it will be time for a nap.

Enjoy the warm weather!

Fry dog: too smart for his own good!

So Pat just drove down to Santa Fe with the dog. It was going to be the dogs, and indeed started with the dogs, for oh, about 2 miles. To the gas station just west of the 18^th Street Trafficway on Steele Road. Then she opened the back and Fry jumped out and ran off. He likes to do that; he’s part beagle. He is an escape artist; just let him in the back yard and he’ll find just where there is enough space between fence and ground to wriggle out. That’s the advantage of the small head; even if Yonkel had the motivation or smarts, he wouldn’t make it. Fry is smart enough to know when he can’t get out; he is fine lying around on the couch all day if he is in the house; he doesn’t get anxious the way that Yonkel does. Which is not to say he doesn’t ever get antsy or walk around in circles; he does. And, of course, if tied up outside he barks at everything. He is, after all, part beagle. But, unlike Yonkel, he has never chewed through his leash. Or chewed up the fender and mudflap of my car.

Anyway, there have been a number of episodes where Fry has gotten away and not come back for a long time. Several years back, I chased him up and down our street, and all the little dead end side streets. For an hour. Then I gave up as I was late for work. That afternoon I came back and he was in the building; someone had let him in. And there was the time at the lake, with Adam, where it was about a half-hour of chasing him around. And a few other times. So, at the gas station, there he is, wandering around, looking at Pat, and running away having a gay old time, playing.

And then, after an hour, Pat and Yonkel left. For Santa Fe. Goodbye, Fry, tagged and chipped hopefully someone will find you and call. I was stuck at work so it was several hours later and dark when I got home, half expecting to find him there – it is only a couple of miles. But no. So I drive to the gas station. And there, in the dark, lurking around the pumps, is the Fry dog.

I stop the car, and get out. He looks up and recognizes it, and comes back around the back. He is unsure of himself, if he is in trouble. I invite him in, and drive back home. He drinks a bunch of water, and I feed him dinner and he sleeps a while on the couch; we go for a short walk later. He is chastened, a little, maybe, for a while. Perhaps. In any case, he is out of a trip to New Mexico, and playing around in the desert for a week; I am flying and he is going to go stay with friends (if he is lucky) or a kennel.

But that is several days away. Now he is with me, wondering where Yonkel is. Pat goes away sometimes, but Yonkel and he are always together. Pat assures me, from Santa Fe, that Yonkel has no such stress; he is fine without Fry. So, today we drove down to the lake. And he recognizes it, and is happy, and is waiting not too peacefully for our walk. And so we walk.

Along the road that we always walk, down the west side of the lake from the little road to our house to the public dock. I let him off the leash, despite the new and (to me) ominous signs about every hundred feet on right on the other side of the road that said “WIHA. Walk in Hunting Area only. Shotguns and Bows only. No Fireams Deer Hunting”. Somehow, I was not reassured, but I didn’t hear any shooting or zings of arrows. I guess it is ok to hunt deer with bows, which is a good thing; for birds you need a shotgun, and I don’t think you’re going to hunt rabbits with a bow, unless you’re Catnip Everlast from the “Hunger Games”; even Robin Hood stuck pretty much to deer!

But I let him off the leash anyway, and he seemed to walk closer to me than usual. At least for a while. He didn’t really disappear from sight, not for very long, for the walk down to the dock. We did have a little issue as we passed the house at the next road, where there is a big dog that is protective, barks a lot, and has been even known to come out to chase and attack our dogs. He was there, and alerted by a new dog, a smaller dog, probably a cocker spaniel, whose job, it appeared, was to bark and alert the bigger dog. So out they came, and I am warning them back while urging Fry to move quickly on. And Fry needs to stop and pee on the tree right on their lawn. He must feel safe when I’m there, but they were still threatening and I kept warning them back and urging him on, and he felt he needed to stop and pee again. And now the lady of the house is out calling her dogs back, and I’m still warning them off and urging Fry on, so now he decides, of course, to make one more stop at the edge of their property to pee once more.

A smart dog, but not one with very mature judgment. Oh, well. Maybe he’ll enjoy being gone from us all for a week. It looks like he is going to have the opportunity to hang with some other dogs on a lot of land, and maybe even be tested on another beagle characteristic, hunting (or at least finding birds that have been planted).

This morning we went on another walk, following the beautiful sunrise. (OK, following by an hour and a half; I had to wake up, dress, make and drink coffee, eat breakfast – all those irrititating dog-walk-delaying things people do! Cooler, and a lovely walk; I really like it down here. Of course, Fry left less than halfway to the dam, and I worried as I continued to watch the WIHA signs and even heard a shot. I was wearing my RED jacket! He joined me again just before the same house; no dogs out today so he was even bolder, marking on the ground by their sign and thoroughly exploring (and I imagine marking more) their yard; I was on my way home. There is, in any case, a ritualistic nature to our walks; he will not leave our area to go up the hill unless I accompany him (which I only do a couple of times a day, despite his persistent hints, running a ways up the hill and looking back), but once on the road, he is on his own, and comes back on his own.

Now he is lying on the futon in the sun, and I am having another cuppa. J

Dogs, the lake and hunting

So we hear that the city and county have decided to allow hunting around our lake. But take heart: they have decided to not allow rifles, only bow and shotgun! Phew! Of course, they are allowing it right up to the road, which I walk the dogs on all the way down to the public dock. But today I hear that it is being done because the state of Kansas is paying them to do it. The state is broke, and cutting back on education, health care, senior services and everything else, but it has money to pay localities to encourage hunting! There’s something completely incomprehensible about that.

So yesterday, I walk the dogs in the morning as usual. I hope that their color of tan is not too much like a deer, but it is early on Saturday, and quiet. Amazing. No sounds of gasoline engines from cars, boats, planes, or lawn mowers yet. The walk passes without incident. Well, almost without incident. Fry, as usual, is off doing his thing. Every once in a while he comes back to check. We find our way to the camping/picnic area, and run into a lady with two mini dachshunds. Dachshunds are small with short legs, mini dachshunds are smaller, and these two were chub-balls so their bellies almost touched the ground. She was pleased to know that the dog down by the lake (Fry) was mine; Yonkel, she noted approvingly, stayed by me.

On the way back, though, in the woods around which the first housing road circles, Fry spied something and charged in. Yonkel, weighing prudence against excitement, hesitated a couple of moments and then followed. Not to be heard from for quite a while. I came home dog-less. After maybe 45 minutes I went out in the car, down to the public dock, and then back on that first road. There is Yonkel. He gladly gets in as I open the back of the car. A little farther on is Fry. He won’t get in, but is willing to trot alongside the car. I get tired of going so slowly, so leave him. He is back after another 45 minutes or so. OK.

This morning, we went out a little later, after 9:30am. By 10, they were both gone again, in the same woods, and I had kept walking and realized that they were not coming, so I headed home. They weren’t there. I sat down, worked for a while, worried about hunters. After about 45 minutes I went out in the car and re-drove yesterday’s routes. No luck. No dogs. No sound. Drove some more. Came back home. No dogs. Worked some more.

About 11:40, I get a call. One of my dogs had been stuck in the water and couldn’t get out, but this woman’s husband and another man pulled him out. Wow, am I grateful! I was wondering why at least Yonkel hadn’t returned! I quickly drive over there, to the first road. No dogs, but the two very nice men who had pulled them out are there; they say the one fell off the dock, they guessed. They have just headed off, generally in the direction of my house. I thank them and head home. No dogs. No dogs for a long time. I go back out and drive.

I go back to the same place, and the same two guys are still there. I just missed them, they say, they had headed out in the other direction. The older guy who lives there had heard the barking, and thought it was across the inlet at the picnic area. Then he looked down and saw the dog stuck in the water. It’s hard for him (the man) to get down the hill, so this other guy helps (not so young himself). He says that the other dog was sitting on the dock watching. I choose to believe that Fry was loyally staying by his friend. The one he had gotten in trouble in the first place.

I figure NOW they must be headed home; I can’t believe that at least Yonkel hasn’t had enough. But I go the other way to the public dock first to make sure, then come home. No dogs.

Finally, as the clock chimes 1pm, there is a scratching at the door, and there is a very wet Yonkel outside. Too wet, in fact, for this to have been from that episode over almost 2 hours ago. Incredibly, he must have been back in the water! How dumb can he get?

So I towel him down before bringing him in and putting him by the space heater, where he starts on the long process of licking himself off.  Now he is asleep. And still no sign of Fry yet. I figure he’ll get hungry after a while. In 2 or 3 hours. Oh, here he is! Couldn’t actually post the piece until he showed up (1:30)

And I was worried about them getting shot! They can get themselves into enough trouble without help!