Thinking Like Dog

Paul and I went up to the Methow Valley for a vacation. That's how spoiled we are: we take vacations from living in the forest on an island near a beach. I take vacation from an easy twentyfive hour a week job and he takes vacation from being retired.

It's so easy to take everything for granted. I have a real problem with spending way too much brain time bitching about stuff I want to change . I spent the whole of our vacation trying to stop thinking about local politics, boring, boring, annnoying, but stuck in my head like an earworm.

Jody, on the other hand, loved the hell out of our vacation.

Jody has the gift for enjoying herself. She is very much into sensual experiences. For her the chance to bound through fields of dry grass was an intense pleasure. The chance to smell something new, jump in an unfamiliar body of water, hike up a new trail...she doesn't have to work at being in the moment!

I do. I have to work at paying attention to what is outside my head. I was most successful on the hike around the big hill down near town.

We set out in the early evening when the overcast sky was paling into a light lavender. The trail was steep enough to make me pant, sort of like climbing endless stairs, and as I trudged along I watched the slow change in the immediate scenery. It was a festival of fall color; the dried grasses in every shade of dun, tan, gold, pale yellow, the shrubs turning to rust and orange, the  cheerful groves of aspen still fluttering silver and lime green leaves. I particlulary like aspen since I read somewhere that they propigate by root and that most of the plants are the females, thus making each aspen grove a coterie of sisters. Probably a lot of crap but don't correct me: I like to think of them that way!

Anyway I huffed and puffed up the mountain past the aspen sisters, through a grove of dark stately pines, to the dull gold flanks of the peak. Lots of birds but none that I could identify. Finally arrived panting at the top.

Lovely view, magical in the evening light. The Methow Valley is gentle and almost homely, an accessible, quiet beauty: little farms tucked into comfortably rounded hills, a glimpse of the river.

The sort of landscape that could be made into a quilt.

The trip down was just as much of a sensory experience--visually sensual, since I don't have Jody's nose or ears--and I was tired and happy when I got back to the car.

I remember that trip in detail because I paid attention. I wonder if Jody can remember her happy bounces through the long grass?