Discovering the Unfamiliar on a Familiar Hike

When two suspicious intruders show up, these deer flee for their lives.

 Marvin insisted we take the right fork in the trail, when we usually took the left fork. He pulled on his leash insistently, dragging me along with all his thirty pounds. More important was his irresistible beagle determination, so this time I acceded to his wishes and followed him up the right fork of the trail.

I knew the way was fraught with obstacles, fallen trees and fast-flowing streams with steep banks on both sides and twists and turns I could not predict. 

At the first fallen tree blocking the path, I told the dog I had had enough.

"Let's go back," I said. "I'm seventy-three years old. I can't climb over this. Come on."

No matter to him. He wiggled under the fallen behemoth and emerged on the other side to turn to stare up at me with those big brown eyes as if to say, there, that's how it's done. He proved I was lying to him, because he knew I had climbed over this tree before with him. Wearily, I swung my leg up and over, struggled to roll over the large round obstacle, and managed to come down on its other side next to him, out of breath.

It made him more determined. What did it matter to him if I couldn't breathe? We came to the next obstacle, a stream with two steep banks on either side. This was as far as we had ever come on this trail, and I was going no farther.

"All right, that's it," I said. "Let's go back. I can't climb up that bank."

He sat down. 

This time I wasn't lying to him, but his determination hadn't waned. He sat and he would not move. I cajoled and cajoled, but the only way he was walking was straight ahead through the stream and over that steep muddy opposite bank.

"I'll try it," I said. "but I'm going to slip and fall on my face, and it will be your fault."

He surmounted the bank easily, and surprisingly, so did I.

Suddenly, we were alone together in a strange and unfamiliar land, when this park was so familiar it was almost home. For many years we had come here most mornings, but we had never been to this part of the park.

Would we survive?

Lost in the wilderness

  

There really wasn't any question of that. We didn't encounter any bears or wolves or crazy men with chain saws. We did encounter a young couple, the girl with binoculars and the boy with a video camera, but they just said hello and politely walked past us

.

The trail was uphill. The new feel of the hike energized me with a sense of discovery. When a familiar place shows you a new face, there's a sense of wonder. It's like learning something fascinating you never experienced before in an old lover. Has this been here all this time? Why hadn't I known this before about you?

It was the feeling my dog had been trying to communicate to me. This was the feeling he wanted for himself that day. Maybe he was bored with our old hike. Maybe he just wanted something exciting and new in his life.

Whatever the reason was, I was thankful for the lesson and experience he insisted upon.

There were more trees fallen across the path to clamber over and more muddy streams to ford. We struggled up the hill and got caught on briars and pricked by them, but the little blood I lost from the thorns didn't matter. The fatigue melted away with the newness.

It was the rarest of things, a virgin experience in familiar surroundings.

That was something to treasure.

Thanks, Marvin.

We broke into an open field at the top of the hill and just beyond that was the familiar trail home.

A fern opening up to another spring.

An old stump.

The familiar trail.

Virginia bluebells along the trail.

Trail's end.

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