Unorganized Reflections on Snow and Walking, Part I: Narrative Heading Towards Dry Creek (dogs, deer, hamsters, runt pigs and a small-town health-food store)

View of the chicken coup from the front walk.

 

It is the morning after the first snow of the season.  I sit in my recliner and look out the glass door.  There’s probably three inches on the patio table, but only an inch or two on the ground.  It is always like that with the first snow.  The ground retains its heat and melts most of the snow away.  It is beautiful anyway.  I wish I could go walking, but I don’t much of that these days.

 Walking and snow have always been a part of my life.  When I was young and we lived in town, and there was snow and a full moon, Dad would want to drive up to Dry Creek to burn the stacks of dead juniper left from the railing that took place prior to us purchasing the property. 

After school, he’d come home and tell Mom to cook up a big pot of chili.  We’d gather the two dogs, Lady and Muff, both Pomeranian mixes.  Lady, a mixture of Pomeranian and Chihuahua, was slender and dainty like a deer.   She even had the personality of a doe.  She was Dad’s dog, and pretty much terrified of everyone else.   The slightest unexpected movement would set her prancing across the room for the shelter of the legs of a table or chair.  Muff, a mixture of Pomeranian and Terrier, was short, stocky, and fearless.  He ran all over town, biting the wheels of cars and semi-trucks as he raced through the streets with wild abandon.  He lost his life, telling a German Shepherd he better not even dare step into our yard.  But he had his soft side.  He loved hamsters.  I had a couple.  And he loved mine.  Not to eat, but as pets.  I’d also walk him downtown (back then there actually was one) to the health food store, which oddly enough sold vitamins, Asian food, soft-serve yogurt and small pets, such as hamsters and ferrets.  I’d bring Muff inside and walk him up and down the small aisle and he’d sit up in front of each cage, begging to get a hamster out to meet him.

But I digress.  This post was to be about snow, and to snow we will get.  We’d all climb in the old Ford Falcon, which was old even back then.  The one window was busted out and had plastic taped over it.  Fortunately, for us, Dad had a weird accounting system.  He didn’t have enough money to purchase a new automobile, but he did have enough go in with two friends and buy Dry Creek.  That single decision will affect generations.  It is why, right now, I can sit almost housebound, and look out the sliding glass window at a stretch of untamed white.  I glance now and then for the sight of deer or turkey.  So far, nothing, but it will not stay like that.  Without question, I will see deer today without even trying.  They are as much a part of my life as subways are to a residence of New York City, as elevated trains are to  a residence of Chicago.

 

A similar snow storm from last year viewed from our sliding glass door.

I think, perhaps, deer are the reason Dad purchased Dry Creek.  Everything else was a justification.  Yes, it did have an alfalfa field then, but due to lack of water, we only got two crops (instead of the normal three or four).  And yes, there was a barn yard, and we did have animals—chickens, pigs, sheep and one steer.  But those were but excuses.

A herd of deer right out the front door--a daily sight October through May.

The real reason to hold the property was to watch deer in the moonlight.   That is why the dogs, the chili and the family were in the car, headed up Canyon Road. Oh, and the pigs.  I forgot the pigs.  We had two pet ones.  I can’t remember how many farm ones, maybe three or four.  Both the pets were runts.  Wilber was the eldest of the two.  He was born small and his mother ostracized him.  Dad rescued him and brought him home to be bottle fed.  Wilbur was soon up and growing, full of spunk.  His favorite activity in the summer was taking his snout, scooping up the neighborhood dogs, and tossing them.  Surprisingly, the neighborhood dogs liked it too.   There’d be four or five dogs on the front lawn waiting to be tossed.

The second runt remained a runt until the day she died.  She simply didn’t grow.  She was healthy, but tiny.  I wouldn’t believe it either, if I didn’t know better.  Dad called her Oinka.  She was the size of a toy poodle and he treated her like a toy poodle.  He took her everywhere, even up north, to Salt Lake, the big city.  He carried her around in a box.  He’d take her into K-mart or wherever.  He’d get away with it by telling people she was a new breed of dog called a Piggle.  Again, I wouldn’t believe it if I were not there. 

But I don’t think Oinka ever made the moonlight-snow-and-deer excursions.  Her life was happy, but short.  She died during the summer, sleeping in her box of the front porch while Dad worked in the front yard.  The sun moved and he didn’t notice.  She had a stroke.  For a week she could only walk backwards and then she died.  He was heartbroken.

So, if memory serves me right, Oinka was not there.  Lady, either.  She too had died.  We’d planted a baby spruce down by the cabin in memory of her.  So, I guess, it wasn’t two dogs, just one dog and a pig, a pot of chili, and Mom, Dad and I headed up Canyon Road towards the snow, the moon, the deer, the bonfire and all that glory.

But, that will have to wait until next time.  Sometimes life is so rich that it can’t be reduced to something neat and trim, like a plotted, suburban lawn, but must stretch on, undefined, untamed as the snowy Juniper flats of Dry Creek.