An Old Familiar

Walk: City Creek Canyon off-leash dog trail
Length: 2 miles?
Duration: 1 hour?

Here is a picture I took at the top of the off-leash trail at Memory Grove. The dogs had to wait patiently in position while I got the camera set up, and then not move as I came rushing at them to take my place. It took several tries to get it right, and to make sure I didn't look too much like a mushroom.

Walking this trail is nostalgic, because I used to bring the dogs here all the time when we lived on Capitol Hill. The dogs knew where we were as soon as we got out of the car, and the race to the off-leash section was on. As we walked, I was very conscious of how obnoxious Ida is, but also of how she is improving slightly. We're going to have a dogsitter in July to take care of the dogs while we are up at Snowbird for the Folk and Bluegrass Festival. I thought about all the weird shit that I do to control my dogs, and wondered how I'm going to be able to convey that to Meghan, or whether, indeed, I need to. Am I just over-controlling? If I wasn't here, would they be placid, friendly little beasties? I don't think so. So, I will have to explain to Meghan Ida's psychology (wow...I'm really starting to sound like a harf!): she wants dominance, but she's also very very fearful. I'd say that's one of the worst combinations for a dog. The way this comes out on the trail is that she feels she needs to control every little movement that Shed makes. If I let her, she will keep him corralled and cowering at my ankles for the entire walk. The only way to break her of this is to make her heel, and tell Shed to go ahead. If he breaks out first, she'll ignore him. Making Shed go first, however, also takes some work because his psychology is to be submissive and avoid confrontation, and he doesn't often believe that I can really stop Ida from herding him. He eventually will run out a little ways, but when I release Ida from the heel and she comes running up to him, he always crouches down and braces himself for the blow he knows is coming. I actually think that move of his is very cute...sad, but cute.

One happy thing for Shed is that he is unafraid of other dogs (unlike Ida). So here he is going in for a nice butt smell on a huge saint bernard. Ida gave this dog as wide a berth as she could. If she's really scared (usually when a dog approaches her), she'll put her hackles up and start whining softly. Occasionally, if a dog gets too pushy, she'll turn and snark him. This never happens, however, if I tell her calmly that she is okay and to just keep moving.

Sometimes I feel like a real idiot when I'm walking my dogs. Why can't I just have normal dogs who run and frolic and play? No I have to have these weird creatures with their social hangups...I mean CUTE weird creatures!

Other highlights from this walk include wild rose bushes...

lots of water...

a snake!...

and the rock footprint.
After the walk, I went to the yarn store and bought some lace weight yarn in a blueish-gray called "Charcoal." I've been wanting to try knitting lace for quite a while now, so I've found this pattern: halcyon. I'm going to knit it without the god-awful ugly ribbon and bow at the ends. Really...why ugly up a pattern as nice and simple as that?

The Walk: Porter Fork in Millcreek Canyon

Length: 1 hour

Distance: ?

Well, in the heat of the afternoon, the dogs and I headed up Millcreek Canyon despite the skeptical looks of Molly, who objects on principle to the $2.25 fee you must pay as you leave the canyon. But I wanted real canyon hiking though, and Millcreek is the only close canyon that allows dogs (off leash, no less!), so that's where I went.

I was disappointed, however, in my choice of walks. I pulled off at Porter Fork, on the recommendation of my mom, and perhaps under the supernatural influence of Orrin Porter Rockwell (the avenging angel!). Porter Fork is a paved road, with private cabins lining it, following a fork of Mill Creek up a steep canyon. It was pretty enough, the dogs loved playing in the water, and there was sometimes enough shade, but not enough. And the paved road, the houses, and the cars kept getting me down. Still I had that moment I was looking for of "I'm up in the middle of a goddamn canyon!!!" on the way down, when I looked up from my feet (I'm pretty clumsy) and saw this vista:


It made me pretty happy! I don't know why...just did. $2.25 worth of view, right here...If only Shed would turn around, that is (there were other hikers coming up the road, just around that bend).

Along the road, I saw many dandelions. I wondered if they had been carried up on the undercarriages of cars visiting the cabins, or if they grew naturally as a weed in the Rockies. As I walked along, I thought about that bunch of "Dandelion Greens" that I often see at the grocery store next to the Kale and Chard and Collard Greens. It runs, maybe $1.99, $2.49. I've never bought them because I always think "why should I buy something that grows for free on my lawn?"

Seeing all those dandelions growing for free on the side of the road, away from the fertilizing and pesticides of urban lawns, it made sense to collect some for dinner tonight. See, Molly, I broke even on my trip to Millcreek, because I got the greens free, see there? Of course, Molly would never pay money for greens, period, not liking them. But she knows I like them (knows...not the same as understands), and knows I often pay good money for them. What's another thing she doesn't understand? The kale I'm growing in our raised backyard vegetable garden. I'm sure she sees it as a waste of good space where basil could be growing for pesto, bruschetta, and tomato/basil/brie pasta...Molly's trinity of favorite dishes. There are things like this, and times when we just don't get each other's ways. The other night when she had insomnia and lay in bed staring at the ceiling (something that unnerves me greatly...I'd rather be reading a book), I looked over at her and said "I don't even understand one thing about you right now! You're like a completely separate person from me" (duh!). After 10 years of marriage, it seemed revolutionary to say. I'm sure she thinks the same about me all the time.

So I turned one of the plastic bags I picked up for dog poop at the beginning of the trail into a dandelion bag. I pulled the youngest, smallest looking leaves I encountered (though I didn't avoid all flowering plants...apparently the rule if you want to avoid bitterness in the greens). I cooked them with dinner tonight by blanching them in water with garlic, then sauteeing in olive oil with some honey, lemon juice, and salt. It ended up good...bitter, but yummy.

One small problem I have with Porter Fork is envy. Seeing these cute, old cabins up along the creek makes me nostalgic and envious. One little yellow house had smoke coming from the stone chimney...it was a lovely smell and a lovely sight:
Unlike the ugly, ostentatious, over-sized new construction going on across the road and up the creek a bit:
The trees and vans here occlude some of the uglier bits...but trust me, it's UG-LY. And big.

Nevertheless, Porter Fork was a good walk. Enjoyable. Especially for these two rascals:

Walk: Shoreline Trail, between Red Butte Gardens and This is the Place Monument State Park.

Distance: 2 1/2 miles?

Length: 50 minutes

On this, my first day of freedom after my first year as a teacher at Waterford, I took a walk with my parents, their dog Schatze (on left), and my dogs Shed (middle) and Ida (right). My parents are both recovering from knee replacement surgeries, but still they sometimes outstripped me on the trail. How sad. I realized recently that there are no stairs in my life now. My house is one story. The school I teach at is one story. And that's about the extent of my past 9 months. The walks in my new neighborhood (much to my enjoyment) are mostly flat...only by heading in one direction (east) do I ever face a steep grade. Somehow, I always walk north, or south, or west. So, climbing to the base level of the Shoreline Trail winded me a bit.

Even though Shoreline is an on-leash trail (with lots of joggers and bikers), my father insisted that NO ONE walks their dogs on leash there. So, the pooplers ran and ran. All in all, they probably walked three times the distance we did. They also lolled in mud puddles...and sprawled in large swaths of grass, tall and green from all the rain we've had lately...
I took lots of pictures of flowers for some reason. This is something I normally object to. Perhaps it was the unfettered freedom that got to me...the sense that nothing I did today matters to anyone. Having no classes to plan for, no papers to grade, no students to worry about was blissful. And so...
Walking with Lyn and Russ is mostly talking about flowers, politics, the dogs, and upcoming social events. Not much time for ruminating, but an enjoyable spin nonetheless. I don't like how sunny this walk is, but I must admit it's a beautiful view. After the walk, my parents joined me to meet Molly at Koko kitchen for a celebratory lunch of sushi and noodles. Feeling done with the school year has made me very happy today. I planted. I weeded. I read The Crocodile Street by Bruno Schultz. I looked at books I have yet to read. I harvested the first veggies from my new garden (chard), then at 6:00 P.M. (10 hours after posting final grades), I get this e-mail from a student:

hi Dr. Taylor,
I hope you're enjoying summer!! I'm trying to! but i keep having this feeling to email about you recieving my paper. So i'm curious to know if u did? I hope you get this soon! and i can hear back from you! and have a great summer! Oh and one more question! what's my current grade in your class?

thanks,

Xxxxx Xxx

Hmmmph. So many exclamation marks. Such neglect of proper capitalization. Such inconsistent use of "u" rather than "you" (I don't mind abbreviation, but choose one or the other and be consistent!). Such an airhead thing to e-mail your teacher 2 1/2 weeks after the essay was actually due. And now, suddenly, I have one more thing to worry about before I can put school out of my mind completely. So it goes.

More from the outpost of Summer in a few days.

A Lesson Learned: Or, Why I Hate Most People Outside of My Immediate Family

The Walk: Well, I was supposed to make it all the way to M & M's house, but karma intervened.

Distance: With the four blocks of doubling back, about 15 blocks.

Okay, so I was a bad dog owner.

My dogs are usually fairly routine in their business. The black dog seldom shits anywhere except in the back yards of the three houses he considers "home." The white dog, if walked at a certain time of day, will always shit as we pass the off-leash dog park; I suppose she is urged on by the wafting smell of the thousands of dogs who have shat there in the past. When we pass this park, I always pick up a bag from the dispenser because I know what to expect. Last night proved to be no exception. I felt like a good dog owner.

Until several blocks later, when she decided to take yet another dump, right on someone's lawn, of course, and me without bags. So, I didn't slow down. I just kept walking. It wasn't the nicest thing in the world for me to do, but it wasn't the worst either. I just hoped the shit landed on the lawn of someone who might understand. Boy, were those hopes dashed.

Several blocks later I was flagged down by a boy on a skateboard, who pointed behind me. I turned to see a very angry older woman bearing down on me. As soon as she noted the eye-contact, she said "Your dog just shit on my lawn! I was just cleaning! I am an old lady! How could you do this to me! You must come back with me an pick it up! How could you do such a thing! What kind of person are you!" As soon as she stopped to breath, I said "You're right. That wasn't very nice of me. Certainly I'll come back and pick it up." And I turned to accompany her back to the scene of my crime, for my penance.

As we walked back to her house, she marching ahead, the dogs and I walking behind at a pleasant pace, she kept turning back to continue her tirade against me, and this is where my equanimity began to turn to hatred. Again she told me that she was an old woman, and that people shouldn't do this to old women. She was 71 years old, and she had to follow me 3 blocks! I was thinking, "How could I have known you were old? Did you have a sign on your lawn I didn't see, which read 'Warning: Irate Older Woman Lives Here,' because that would have been helpful. And why is it any worse for me to let my dogs shit on an older person's lawn? And why can't you shut up? I'm coming back to pick up the fucking dog shit already!" We continued walking, and I said "I admire your fortitude."

Now, this may make me a despicable person, but ever since sixth grade I've found that an easy way to make stupid people shut up is to use words they don't know. Smart people will ask you what the word means. Stupid people will just look blankly at you. Perhaps she didn't know what "fortitude" meant, because she did shut up for half a block.

Then she criticized my parenting skills, abused my dogs and the size of their shit for a while, and said she was going to call the police. We finally arrived at her house.

After fetching me some bags, she stood over me, expressing a near-constant stream of verbal abuse, while I meticulously scraped up my dog's stinky shit from her yard. The lawn, I noted, was brown and patchy. She probably blames the condition of her lawn, I thought, on the evils of dogs and their negligent owners who allow them to do their business there. Every once in a while she'd break into her tirade to point out another microscopic spot of shit I had failed to remove properly. When I was done, she told me not to throw that stinky, disgusting shit into her garbage. I was to walk along and find another garbage can to use. Then she told me to never walk my dogs past her house again.

I stood up and looked her in the eye. "Wait a minute," I said, "you have no right to tell me where I can and cannot walk my dogs. Next time I pass your house, however, I will be sure to have a bag with me."

"I hope you have learned your lesson," she said.

"I certainly have," I replied. "Thank you very much for teaching me this important lesson today, and I hope you have a pleasant remainder of your week"

And I continued on my walk.

The Couch: Signs of Change

The Walk: Accidental death march around the neighborhood

Distance: 22 Blocks (3.3 miles)

Duration: Lost track of time toward the end...over an hour? 70 minutes?


Thoughts: I worked on this essay I was asked to write for school:

“The train stamps and stamps onward. I stand at the window and hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my youth.”
--Erich Maria Remarque

“Even though I’m only fourteen, I know what I want, I know who’s right and who’s wrong, I have my own opinions, ideas, principles, and though it may sound odd coming from a teenager, I feel I’m more of a person than a child—I feel I’m completely independent of others.”
--Anne Frank

Twice in the last week, in two different classes, I’ve found myself asking my students “how do you know when you have grown up?” They answered: “You don’t. You can’t.”

My students are brilliant.

Objectively, how can you know that you are, now, officially an adult and an experienced veteran of war instead of a frightened recruit (in the case of Remarque’s character, Paul Bäumer), or an independent, self-sufficient young woman instead of a little girl (in the case of Anne Frank). When do you realize that you are a pillar of salt instead of a woman (Lot’s wife from the Bible), a cockroach instead of a human being (Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa in “The Metamorphosis”), or a flower bending over its own reflection in a pond instead of a young man (in the case of Narcissus in Greek mythology).

Are you aware of the moment of change? Can you see it in yourself without external validation (Honey! What happened? You’re a pillar of salt!) Does it dawn gradually as you lay in bed and wiggle your multiple legs, flex your antennae, aware of some subtle difference, until finally you raise your head and see, unbelieving, the horrible change that has occurred? Or, like Narcissus, are you so absorbed in your own beautiful condition that you remain blissfully unaware that you are now a flower?

I still remember the moment when I finally felt like a full-fledged adult. It was not the first time I voted. It was not the day I could walk into the bar and legally order a Flaming Dr. Pepper. It did not even occur on a birthday. Instead, it was the day that I bought my first couch. Until that moment, it had been futons for us. Futons are cheap and practical. In a small apartment they can serve as both couch for TV watching and guest bed for those occasions when your friends drink too many Flaming Dr. Peppers and Brain Hemorrhages and need a place to crash.

Futons are also dreadfully uncomfortable as both couch and bed. As a couch, the mattress is always slipping down. As a bed, the mattress has an uncomfortable lump in the middle, from always being folded up. After a while, our friends wised up, stopped drinking mixed shots with silly names, and no longer needed a place to crash. So one day we decided to buy a couch.

It was a real couch, and it wasn’t even from IKEA. It was hand-crafted: velvety brown micro-suede stretched over a wooden frame and springs. Sitting down, one sank into soft, plump cushions. It took up most of the living room in our small apartment. As the delivery men wedged it into place, we stood back to take in the effect. Suddenly, we realized that this was no longer the home of two college graduates making do as we struggled in transitional jobs and graduate programs. This was the house of two adults. We were adults.


Now, long before this particular moment occurred we had begun to change. Our friends, our lives, our methods of entertaining ourselves. Had we noticed these changes? Perhaps, but the total effect was not understood until we found ourselves in the presence of that very grown-up piece of furniture: the couch. Will it be the same for you? Probably not. You may score your first couch from a street corner, or as a hand-me-down from a parent. At some point, however, you will have a moment. It may be your first apartment, your first payment on a brand-new car, or the first time you hear a helpless infant screaming for you in the next room. You will turn to someone next to you and ask, “Are we really that old?” And then you will tuck in your shirt over a spreading paunch, push the hairs back over the thinning spot on the back of your head, or tug nervously at the Spanx riding up your butt, and awkwardly shamble back to your state of unawareness. Trust me, it will happen.

Meeting Folks, Murals, Walking-Pains

FRIDAY
The Walk: Around the neighborhood

Length: 12 blocks (about 2 miles)

Duration: 40 minutes

Thoughts: Walking along 1300 East I ran into an acquaintance...slightly more than an acquaintance, because I went to her wedding, but less than a friend and not quite a family member. She was pushing a stroller and walking two dogs...neither the dogs nor the baby were hers, though; she was babysitting. She told me she and her husband were moving to Texas, and I thought about how some relationships work like this: they move along by big events. Last time we saw her was likely at some event (perhaps another wedding) not long after we'd seen her at her wedding (a dreadfully boring one, by the way), and now they are moving along to another place, another time in their life. We are happy enough to see each other on the street and catch up on the big news, and we won't see each other again until the next wedding in the group. As I walked away (or, was dragged away by my two dogs) I thought about how she doesn't really exist in my mind until I see her. She exists only as an occasional update to the software, otherwise she's one of the programs that sit at the back of my hard drive and don't ever emerge on the surface of my screen.

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SATURDAY
The Walk: To a friend's house

Distance: 4 blocks (.6 miles)

Duration: 10 minutes

Thoughts: I want a mural painted on the back of my house. Why? The back of my house is ugly. A big boring slab of gray-green paint, with two glass windows, and three boarded in windows. It is not open, or alive like the back of my parents' house. It does not have any interesting architectural features, like the back of Molly's parents' house. It is drab and boring, and the cheapest way to liven it up, to my mind, is to cover it with bright colors and figures. I think it would make me happy. I think.

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SUNDAY
The Walk: From our house to May and My's house

Distance: 18 blocks (3 miles)

Duration: 1 hour

Thoughts: The heat. The heat. I think it has gotten to my brain already, because during this walk all I did was obsess about the pedometer and getting to 10,000 steps. Such thoughts are too boring to discuss in detail here. Just one thing I'm mulling over...I wish I didn't tire of walking the same route so quickly. I've walked to their house maybe 3 times? I usually walk along 800 East, because it isn't as busy as 7th and 9th, and 10th doesn't go all the way through. Yesterday, I felt bored with 8th, so I cut up to 9th. I guess there's no real problem with that, it's just that if I get sick of things so quickly, I'm going to run out of new routes to walk in my neighborhood. I remember when we moved here last July, the first walks I took were so fun because it was all new terrain (I had grown so sick of every walk in the old neighborhood). Now I'm starting to see the enjoyment tarnish a bit, and I haven't even been walking here a year yet. It just annoys me, is all.

Rocking Chair Reds

The Walk: From the furniture store to home

Distance: 1.6 miles

Duration: 30 minutes

Thoughts: We bought two new red rocking chairs for the front porch. Birthday presents. They look great, and they have a nice, smooth rock. As we set them up on the porch, flakes of snow began drifting from the gray skies, a lazy drift. None of them seemed to land on the greening grass, or on the yellow daffodils. It was a cold wind, however, that escorted me home on my walk, along with a steady, but light, drizzle of rain, then soft hail, and then the snow.

People at school were bitching up and down the halls, but I like a spring storm, and a gray sky. I've been thinking a lot about T.S. Eliot poems lately--the early stuff. I never think about his later work, I have no taste for it. But as we are reading All Quiet on the Western Front, the word "anesthetized" from Prufrock keeps popping into my head. I know. "April is the cruelest month" would be more appropriate.