walking with dogs

The snow makes walking around my beloved meadows great exercise. I come back breathing hard and in a sweat! But it's also one of the best ways I have to relax. Walking through the meadows and woods, where things are, just are is so calming. They are not striving to out-do each other. They are not judging and evaluating right or wrong. They just are. As I walk along, concentrating on my footing in the tricky places over rocks or fallen trees, breathing, and feel the wind or snow or sun on my face, much of my thinking/aka worrying falls away.

The dogs have a marvelous time reading the latest news in the scents along the way. Great excitement is to be found at the foot of this tree or that, in a little tunnel that disappears into the snow there, on the top of the zigzagging cedar rail fence here...then on the the next scents.

They gulp mouthfuls of snow at times. Molly stops often to chew on dead grass, to snuffle eagerly at a promising scent in the snow:


Misty leaps like a deer, over deadfallen trees, over fences, usually running at full tilt: (that's not a rabbit or hare, it's Misty in motion)


Tasha crisscrosses back and forth, keeping tabs on all of us, trying to keep us in line, occasionally nipping, herding:


They are all laughing, eyes sparkling with fun and eagerness.

What I was worried were joy-riders last week, have turned out to be a team of loggers scouting out the best route to get to the cedars in the low-lying area by the creek, beyond the last meadow. A "road" over the snow-covered meadows has now been tracked by heavy machinery and part of the cedar-rail fence taken down to make a gateway into the woods beyond. I have mixed feelings as I note the changes to the woods around us. But the loggers do not disturb the peace of our house, nor do I encounter them on my walks. Somehow, I seem to time my walks to when they have gone and the woods are silent. I have the woods to myself and the dogs.