After over one thousand
vignettes, anecdotes, prose impressions, flashes, short stories, micros, and
other,- the day is often still fresh when the step is taken from the vehicle
down to the earth. The sun for instance, was bright, and it was taking the
chill slowly out of the air. There was a lady across the way there, and she was
taking annoying pictures with a small white lapdog. Talking on her phone quite
loudly, overly enthused about some surely trivial thing, - she flapped her gums
into the phone and I kept on going. That was when I saw it. Well, I first heard
it, - a rustle that was larger than the rustle of a squirrel. I wasn’t far from
the car, and there was still a fence that divided the makeshift parking area
from the woodland. I looked. I looked and then stopped and looked. It was a
coyote. He or she I do not know, so shall call it ‘he.’ He had seen us first,
been watching us, and then went back just for safe measure about ten feet. Stopping,
he looked again. I guess the dogs would have chased him off, and wanted to, -
so I held them back for the time being. It was a face to face situation I had
not been in before, and the end of the fence separating them was only about
five feet by then. I looked again. I thought he had run off but had stopped to
observe us. I looked at him and found him to be simply beautiful, more like an
almost fully grown pup than anything else. Gray, fluffy, healthy, spry. He ran
away, back to the huge flaxen field-hill under the light pastel blue sky with a
few certain whiffs of pieces of white cloud hovering overhead. It all felt
mystical or at the least auspicious. A sighting. I researched them and found
that they run in packs and also sometimes live for times individually. They
also can form packs that are loosely made, meaning not with family members but
simply with others. I figured we would walk a few pathways over, but still go
in the similar direction that we usually did when there. It was then I realized
what might have drawn him there besides the warm weather and simple yet ample curiosity.
It was the annoying lady on her phone making all that noise. That, and moreso,
her small white lapdog. He had been watching the dog, the pair. Little did the
lady know. Instinct is a funny thing. I am a human, and was all for the coyote,
thinking the lady and the lapdog should not be harmed, but should leave, - that
a place like this was his place. The glen and thicket and berries, the small
stream and especially the open field that was really a large summit that served
as both. The quiet shaded areas under the numerous Pines. The valley and what
was further than the valley. Let her go yap on her cell phone somewhere else,
and take the dog with her. I walked along the valley top. I could soon hear
more sounds like at the beginning. These were not squirrels. They were
something else and though I did not see anything this time, I felt they were
more coyotes- maybe part of the original ones pack. He had wandered off perhaps
to see the sites. The dogs ran down the valley wall and chased something, but I
heard no fight, yelping, bark. They chased something up and across in front of
me and continued on. Having been with them for two, two and a half years, and
daily, - it was possibly the fastest I had ever seen them go. And not even in
an open field! - But amidst all kinds of trees, chaparral, brush and wildflower,
log, fallen branch, - and they had come up a hill to boot! - A steep one that
if you fell down it would be quite hard to recover. It could almost be called a
cliff. How wonderful it was to resume the walk as the dogs looped back up with
me- just in front in fact. There was freedom. Like writing without a rule,
without a reader, without a purpose,- that is how we walked the rest of the way
and day there,- openly, freely, innocently, dare I say,- happily.
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