dogs are at their happiest when they see a cooler being heaved into a car, followed by their food bowls, bed and human sleeping bag. for them, despite a claim to color blindness, it is a visual equation for empty places. those without crosswalks at which they know to sit until they hear the walk signal chirp, or strange men with beards or bicycles (which terrify them completely.) they know also that if their beds and bowls are coming along with the cooler they will likely have an opportunity for long-term chases of any small boned things that scoot along under the sage and an opportunity to root their snouts in little freshets and creeks until, covered with mud, they will ignore the rule of no dirty dogs in the tent and pile onto the down and wool and made a muddy show of denning down for a night crushed with stars and pine winds.
the Volvo got us safe and sound down the sloping grades of Guardsman Pass and the map led us to a wide meadow, circled with singing aspen groves and not (surprisingly) cut up and slashed with the garish hieroglyphs of a ski resort in summer. we hauled all manner of heavy cumbersome things along when the sign told us the Volvo had to stay where she was and ended up finally in the quiet we had anticipated.
(excuse my lack of finesse in the realm of constructing an acceptable panoramic view...)
and were of course ready to eat some snacks out of paper packets (a few almonds twisted up in newspaper slips, a clutch of apricots, a wedge of Saint Andre that was coyly trying to talk me into eating its entirety before it melted and pooled) and a few bottles of Elephantino, lay around in minimal clothes, paint and read and snooze. we did all of these things. and then were interrupted by someone who, apparently, had more genuine claim to the grove than we. read: large cow moose and luminescent calf crashing through the bluebells to water. it was a lucky thing we were stranded on a rock. if a little humbling to be somewhat of a voyeurist spectacle- we all three being topless and in only our bathing suit bottoms...(although the dogs, to be fair, weren't wearing either bathing suit tops or bottoms.) a cow moose and her calf are a thing that strikes fear into me. not because moose are generally fearsome creatures (just monolitihic). but because the unpredictability of a moose, paired with the unbelievable speed at which you can suddenly be confronted all tucked around a mother's universal and manic protective aggression usually mean a person is stuck. especially when in a broad field with two small animals with sharp voices. we froze and i am grateful the dogs stayed, ears forward, tails puffed, but unmoving and quiet. the rest of the story is anticlimactic really. no there were no heroic shots snapped of the animal pair (a silly ingredient, usually, in those stories involving crushed wilderness enthusiasts who come too close and are too brazen in these situations.) nor was there a stampede of hooves paws and feet, barking or howling, blistered bones or narrow escapes. there was instead just a retreat, with head lowered, backpacks carefully and slowly pulled on, and quiet steps back out of the glade. thus we were unharmed. unharmed and surely swindled out of the abovementioned denning down. the wind was whippy and the celebratory atmosphere had really gone right out of everything. (please let me mention a better part of the Saint Andre was left sadly on the rock.) and so we beat it home, brazenly drinking Elephantino out of a water bottle on the bumpy ride back to the state managed highway and took up on the deck. it was a conciliatory evening, plied with pencils and paint, gin and tonics and some leftover snacks, but we slept inside in a heap of clean cotton and a rotary fan in the end. not much in the way of wild dreams to report.
however, there was a little walk-drawing progress, which is good enough.
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