Moses Goes For A Run

It was the first long weekend of summer and the city coughed its residents out like smoke. Moses and I sat in the backseat, the windows and air conditioning our lone defense against the thickening smog outside. We lurched through the tail light landscape, just two of tens of thousands choked in the urban exodus.

Half husky, half lab, Moses was an easy companion. I’d always known him as a city dog, an occasional guest at my neighbour’s place. I’d often meet him napping on the floor there, a lone tail-thump his way of acknowledging my arrival. Through eight hours of non-stop Ontario, Moses rarely stirred, opening his eyes only when we slowed to refuel or eat.

When we finally made it to Québec, the shrinking road meandered north for another forty-five minutes. Light pollution gave way to stars, towers to trees, parking lots to lakes. Pavement crumbled to gravel, too, which rumbled the car to life with the low-pitched grind and occasional tictictic of stones hitting the undercarriage.

A wild impatience rose beside me. The vibration triggered some combination of instinct and memory in Moses, and soon he was whimpering, spinning, yelping, even jumping as much as it was possible to do so in a backseat cramped with packs, a sleeping bag, and a confused human.

He wanted out.

After a few minutes of trying to talk him down, Moses’ owner took a hand off the wheel, reached back, and pulled the door handle. With just a sliver of an opening, the dog exploded out of the car, the door swinging and slamming shut from the force of his jump.

I was stunned. This dog that would barely lift his tail in greeting was suddenly bounding in front of us, outpacing our 40 kilometres per hour. His stride was powerful and confident, the white bottoms of his feet kicking wisps of dust in front of the headlights.

We followed as Moses charged on, guiding us through the thickening forest. He would disappear like a spirit into the woods on the right, somehow emerging moments later on the left. He would dart up hills where the road bent for the landscape, leaving us to take the circuitous engineered path. He led for as long as we could keep up, but soon was gone too far too fast for us to follow.

When we finally arrived at the house, Moses emerged from a ridge panting and soaking wet from what I imagined was one of the most satisfying lake jumps ever experienced by a living being. The look on his face was relief and joy.

He was home.

Goat's Beard

I want to rip it out. I want it gone. My fingers curl into the earth, past a few panicked beetles. Potato bugs. The labyrinth of roots, vines, and shoots.

They find clumpy, wet soil. Soil stuck as much to itself as to the root. It yields little purchase and, interwoven with strawberries, a difficult choice: I can have either sweet fruit and a never-ending battle with creeping invasives, or I can rip it all out.

Behind me, a chalky patch kicks up dust at the slightest breeze. An aggressive bout of weeding a few weeks before left the soil barren. No weeds. No life. I planted some peppers there, but they struggled to take root and have flowered ever so tentatively. Meanwhile, the strawberries burst amid the weeds.

I have a tendency to want to tear out anything and everying invasive. To start from a clean slate. I want a spotless desk, a distraction-free writing environment, and a weedless garden. But if you tear out every living thing, the garden becomes a desert.

Sometimes the things you think choke you are the ones that make you strong. They create the conditions for life. And they’re hard as hell to uproot without taking everything beautiful along with them.

So Many

We spread out on the grass, the lake far away and silky. Finally, after months of staring up at mirrored city glass, I could see stars. A 3 year old boy slept beside his mother on the blanket with me. The plan had been to wake him to see the naked night sky for the first time, but his dreams were proving too heavy. With the exception of a few months, I’ve spent most of my life in places populated with over a million people. I’m intimately acquainted with the light-polluted night sky and it’s smattering of maybe-satellite maybe-stars. Not that the city is without beauty. Lonely cubes of light brighten endless shafts of glass. Red flashes burst from tower tops in silent warning to passing aircraft.

But these urban delights are no match for the night sky. To see the milky way poured across your eyes and swim in its barely perceptible movement is to locate yourself in time and space. It is to recognize that truly, in the scale of all existence, you, your problems, your fears, are fucking nothing. It’s a good thing to remember.

It took maybe 30 minutes for the boy to move. His mother spoke at the pace of the stars.

“Look up. Look up.”

A frustrated grunt. He was awake.

“Do you see the stars?”

Affirmation whimpered from the grass.

“How many?” she asked.

A full minute passed as his eyes finally adjusted. I could hear the stars oozing into his consciousness, that sound the earth makes when you’re close enough to hear it.

“So many,” he said.

A few moments later he was in the back seat of the car, fast asleep. I walked to the lake, dipped my paddle into the sky, and rippled to bed.