Despite the wind storm this morning, I packed up the dogs and headed into the trails. The landscape was still muted in shades of blue and grey, with bits of color emerging with each passing minute as the winter sun reluctantly pushed above the horizon. The trees were celebrating the wind in a wild dance, much like the mosh-pit at a night club, thrashing and swaying in unison with the gusty, blustery rhythm.
We weren’t the only ones using poor judgment, willing to risk a branch to the noggin to get some fresh air and much needed exercise. I had one or two conversations with the regular early morning folks, hollering over the roar of the swirling wind. I was glad we risked it - it’s not often that you get to see white caps on the duck pond…..well, practically, anyway.
There were plenty of branches down, alright. Mostly small to medium evergreens with an old rotten tree down in the deeper forest. We were hopping and sidestepping, but thankfully the debris was already under us and not striking from above.
These are the days that I want to be a dog. Or at least be a guest in my one of my dog’s brains. With their superior sniffers, these pups seem to find every freshly downed branch and inspect it with their rubbery black noses. There are older branches, brought down in the last storm, that they simply ignore. It’s the ones that have just tumbled from above that they find most interesting.
I like to think that they are assembling a picture with the scents they find on these bits of nature. Up there, in the tops of the cedar trees and the cottonwood branches, live the mysterious tree dwelling wildlife. The owls and eagles, who fly like birds, but their breath smells of meat. The squirrels and chipmunks that taunt the dogs with their fluffy tails and then scamper up out of reach. The raccoons, seen only in the dark of night. Although the dogs have seen these creatures and chased them from time to time, the high-rise tree residents remain a mystery to them.
Each sniff of a downed branch gives the pup another detail of life in the sky. This cedar branch - sniff - this was a perch of a mama owl who sat, watched and waited for her rodent prey to carelessly come out into the open to be her owlet’s breakfast. That cottonwood twig - sniff - that was the top rung of the ladder to the entrance of the squirrel family’s den, it may even have a tuft of fur snagged in its craggy splinters. The hunk of moss - sniff - a pillow for a slumbering chipmunk infant, now shivering while it’s chipmunk parents scramble to reconstruct their home.
I suppose it’s a bit like we humans, who seem to enjoy watching television shows about hoarders or the rich and famous. We’re just trying to catch a glimpse of how others live. Maybe to make us feel better about our superior lives, or to dream about what it might be like to live in a mansion with servants. The creatures are likely more interesting.
Unfortunately I can’t be a dog for the day, or borrow their fantastic sense of smell. I have tried - I picked up one of the newly fallen bits, and even took a whiff myself, but all I can tell is the kind of tree it fell from. Since I am merely human, I’ll just have to continue to imagine why the odor of those branches is so irresistible to my canine companions.
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