Hoarded Ordinaries

You’ve seen this same scene along Airport Road in nearby Swanzey, NH in both summer and fall, so here’s what the hill-ringed fields at Dillant-Hopkins Airport look like in December.

I’ve been blogging my dogwalks along Airport Road since the very first days of this site nearly two years ago. No matter how many times I walk or snap pictures there, I never feel content that I’ve captured the spirit of the place. On the one hand, Airport Road is just that: a road. The landscape on either side is fairly boring: just fields, trees, water, and lots of sky; nothing spectacular. But because those fields, trees, water, and lots of sky stretch out flat like a blank canvas, Airport Road is home to some of the best lightshows in town, at least if you’re wise enough to head there when the sun is slanting in the afternoon sky under a sheltering rim of cloud.

Yesterday morning my doggie “patient” was doing well, acting his usual happy self and successfully keeping down a breakfast of real dogfood. So we went walking, the two of us, along Airport Road, which is gated on weekends so dogs like Reggie can run free. In the winter, it’s a relief to walk a plowed road rather than fighting snow, and on weekends, places like the Krif railtrail are swarmed with snowmobiles. In a word, a walk along Airport Road seemed just the thing for a convalescing dog and his paper-plagued owner: an afternoon escape.

Unfortunately, Reggie’s paper-plagued owner doesn’t know much about nursing an ailing dog, so when we got home, I made the mistake of giving Reg a full water dish. Reggie gulped it down, then barfed it up in several alarming installments in my living room, in the yard, then in the living room again, repeatedly. I’ve now learned to give an ailing dog water in small, carefully monitored doses; I’ve also decided my living room looks better without the inexpensive area rug I had beneath my coffee table. If all else fails, my ailing dog and I can start a new reality show called Extreme Makeover: Doggie Style! in which we tour carpeted homes and extoll the virtues of the bare-floored life through the artful application of water-induced dog vomit. There have been stranger things on TV, I’m sure.

After receiving word from the vet that Reggie’s white blood cell, glucose, and kidney enzyme levels are normal, we still don’t know exactly what’s wrong. Doc says Reggie’s liver enzymes are noticeably but not alarmingly elevated: perhaps this means Reg is detox-ing from some nasty thing he ate, or perhaps this points to a more pervasive problem with his liver or pancreas. If Reggie were a two-year-old dog with these symptoms, the vet would say he got into something he shouldn’t have; since Reg is a ten-year-old dog, though, there’s always the caveat that in a dog his age, it could be something much worse.

And so I’m back to waiting and watching, withholding last night’s dinner and giving water in small, carefully monitored increments. We slept through the night without midnight emergencies, Reggie and I; this morning, Reg shows no interest in breakfast, and I think that’s probably best. Today, Reg and I will stick close to home: I will grade, and he (I hope) will sleep and recover. And among the things I’ve learned is that the statement “The patient is resting quietly” is one of the most pleasant-sounding utterances in the English language.

One unforeseen benefit of nursing a sick dog is the fact that he’ll wake you at all hours of the night to go outside. On the one hand, going into the New Hampshire cold after an all-day mix of wet snow and freezing rain isn’t the most fun way to spend a Friday night: the unshoveled snow was covered with a thin, unstable crust of ice, and shoveled surfaces were glazed with nearly invisible slickness. There’s nothing more pathetic, I think, than watching a whimpering, listless dog slipping over frozen snow trying to find a sheltered place to vomit. Usually I try to hurry Reg when he does his nightly routine of sniffing and peeing around the yard before bedtime, but last night I didn’t have the heart to rush him, even when he woke me past midnight for yet another emergency trip.

And yet while I fretted over a dog whose suffering I was helpless to mitigate, last night past midnight I was struck at how quiet and serene my backyard was. I already knew via Paperfrog that last night’s moon was particularly high overhead; I also knew from seeing that moon earlier in the evening that it was full and wondrously lustrous, crystal clear in the cold winter sky.

What I hadn’t expected, though, were the moon shadows: one human-shaped, the other canine. I can’t remember the last time I was out and about past midnight even on a Friday night, but last night I learned that most of my neighbors are asleep then…at least the ones who aren’t college students and thus haven’t left Keene to go home for the holidays. On a cold winter’s night when nearly everyone else is asleep with lights out, the full moon high overhead does cast shadows: two bluish blobs following Reggie’s and my feet as we picked our careful way over ice-crusted snow.

No, Reggie’s not better…and the vet isn’t sure why. Yesterday afternoon it took three women–doctor, vet tech, and Mom–to wrestle a wriggling Reg while a blood sample was taken…and now we wait for word on what’s Really Wrong. Stay tuned…

Yesterday was clear and sunny, a perfect day to walk the old rail-trail off Krif Road here in Keene. One benefit to living amongst snowmobilers is the well-maintained trails they keep. While the fields and forest to either side of this trail lie blanketed in ankle- to shin-deep snow, the dirt path that used to be railroad track is smooth and crunchy underfoot: perfect for walking. Although walking a snowmobile trail feels a bit like walking a blinding white highway–there’s no use imagining this is virgin snow, your feet the first to touch it–when both you and your dog are antsy to walk somewhere where you don’t have to fight snow or slush, the Great White Way is the way to go.

I consider it a felicitous accident that today’s Photo Friday theme is Depth of Field. Technically speaking, depth of field refers to “the distance in front of and behind the subject which appears to be in focus.” I’m sure somewhere in my photo archives I have a great macro shot in which a near object is in sharp focus while a distant object is blurred with depth, like the photos in this post. But like many contributors to today’s Photo Friday theme, I chose to interpret “depth of field” in a more metaphorical light, seeing the dwindling lines of visual perspective as creating a “depth” which in this case was observed “in the field” here in snowy southern New Hampshire.

Growing up in the flatlands of Ohio, I’m particularly familiar with this sort of “depth of field.” In Ohio, depth is defined in miles: the visual distance between the Middle of Nowhere where you stand and the End of Nowhere where the horizon nestles like a blade between earth and sky. Visually, the northeast has always struck me as being cramped, with depth defined in vertical rather than horizontal terms. Whether bounded by the skyscrapers and crowded brownstones of Boston or the vertical cliff faces of the White Mountains, I’ve always felt surrounded and contained in New England. Although here in Keene I like the happy medium of a broad Main Street fringed by several-story buildings hugged by a ring of higher hills, whenever I go back home to Ohio, I feel myself breath a deep, soothing sigh as soon as the landscape widens into familiar flatness. In both my heart and lungs, space equals abundance and ease, the loose freedom to settle into an ambling gait that achieves no vertical rise but could go all day spinning space like a rolling globe beneath its feet.

Today is a stay-inside day: I have a pile of freshman and expository writing portfolios to grade, and a persistent pelt of freezing rain is pattering my window panes. Today, depth of field is defined as the distance from bed (where my laptop lies) to coffee table (where those portfolios sit) to kitchen (where the motivation of hot tea and chocolate beckon as a reward for work well done). Having walked yesterday, today I’ll seek an inward focus, my field of depth being directed toward an interior landscape that is broad and expansive no matter what the weather or terrain underfoot.

Yesterday was a good day Reggie-wise: he certainly looks healthy, doesn’t he? Although I’m still not convinced that the Reg-ster is 100% his usual self, I’m cautiously optimistic that things are better, mostly. We’ll see how a day without drugs goes, and then maybe we can wean back to “real” dog food versus the bland baby food he’s been subsisting on. In the meantime, thanks for all the get-well wishes from Reggie’s many and far-flung fans.

Although a still-sick Reggie and I figured out a way to cross the first of two snowy, semi-frozen streams we encountered at Goose Pond yesterday, we turned back at the second. Reg doesn’t look or act like he’s sick; he still nearly falls over himself with jubilation when he hears the word “walk” or the question “wanna go for a car-ride?” But since I came home yesterday afternoon to a not-typical-for-Reg bathroom “surprise” in the middle of my (thankfully) easy-to-clean kitchen linoleum, I know whatever’s wrong with Reg is still wrong, a day or so of thrice-daily medication notwithstanding.

So when my still-sick dog balked at the second snowy stream we encountered during yesterday afternoon’s walk at Goose Pond, I didn’t have the heart to push him. Even when he’s well, Reg is a scaredy-cat when it comes to tricky stream crossings: he gets nervous whenever he’s unsure of his footing, so in places where I hopscotch from rock to log to rock, he typically plunges through the shallows. Yesterday was a cold, single-digit day in New Hampshire, so urging a still-sick dog to take a bitter plunge didn’t seem wise. So we turned back from the edge of that second stream, precariously re-crossed the first, and headed back to our car, having enjoyed a whole walk done in backtracking halves.

December, it seems, is the season of turning back. As we near the snowy stream-crossing of the New Year, it’s natural to balk a bit, pausing to look back on trails trod. Since I’m still busy with the details of grading and the challenges of those thrice-daily doggy meds, I thought today I’d steal a page from Kathleen’s playbook by posting the first sentence from the first post from each month this year.

January 1, 2005: Best of 2004. You’ve seen this picture before…but since this week’s Photo Friday topic is Best of 2004, I thought I’d revisit one of my favorite reflective photos.

February 1, 2005: Winter maintenance. We’ve been having something of a mid-winter heat wave here in New Hampshire with clear sunny days and temperatures in the 30s.

March 1, 2005: In like a lion. Yep, March came roaring in like a lion this year, dumping about six inches of snow on us overnight.

April 1, 2005: Flooded fields. Thanks to Jon Udell for emailing me about “a great shot waiting to be taken.”

May 1, 2005: Emerging. It’s sights like this one that make the long winter months worth it.

June 2, 2005: One photo. June 1 was World Photo Day, when photographers around the globe submit one picture capturing the people and everyday life of their environs.

July 1, 2005: Used. Today’s Photo Friday theme is Used.

August 1, 2005: Mountain Man. Last Thursday marked a rare occurrence.

September 1, 2005: Seasons change. Although the humid air murmurs “summer,” the first tinges of red along the Ashuelot River here in Keene say “autumn” loud and clear.

October 1, 2005: Warms you twice. Thoreau once noted that wood warms you twice: once when you chop it, and once when you burn it.

November 1, 2005: Caption, please?. I’ll let you provide your own caption to this photo, snapped on Sunday outside the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA.

December 2, 2005: Settling in. Since I’m still playing catch-up from this week’s unplanned layover in Cleveland, I thought you might enjoy a quick glimpse of how Reggie’s settling in here at home after his holiday at the kennel.

At the almost-edge of the New Year, here’s wishing you and yours many safe and stable crossings…sick dogs and flood-misplaced bridges notwithstanding.

I spent a good deal of today inside, on campus, collecting final portfolios from my freshmen comp and Expository Writing students while grading work from my online writing and grammar students. As I sat inside my accustomed classroom in Morrison Hall, I could see from the inside looking out the Silver Maple I blogged about last week standing like a sentry over the snow-blanketed quad.