Tiny Expeditions
I began this piece last July, and since I’m spending a little more time at home right now and I’m not likely to be going on any big expeditions in the near future, it feels like the right time to fnish it and let go of it. Especially on this first day of spring.
Tiny Expeditions
I wake up early this morning.
I’ll start again.
My puppy wakes up early this morning.
I resist, but a hungry black lab has the last word.
We walk down the stairs together as always, knee against knee, a step at a time.
I love the way that he’s chosen to glue himself to my side. It makes me feel relevant.
I open the kitchen door and Sachem trots outside, pausing on the deck to take stock of the morning. He's tired of being in bed, is thirsty for a new day. While I make tea I watch him explore all the corners of the garden, working up an appetite for breakfast. After a while he turns and runs back across the grass—a sleek, black, gangly conundrum of ears and legs—and bounds into the kitchen, bright-eyed, to make sure I’m still here. When my sons were young they would rush in and demand Look at, Mama! Look at! They didn’t have to say Look at me—that was a given. It feels the same now with Sachem. We all have a need to be witnessed. And we need to check that our witness is there, waiting just for us.
—
July mornings are best caught early, consumed fresh. I roll the car windows halfway down and Sachem rides shotgun, sniffing the salt air. A mist hovers over the bay. The sand on First Beach is freshly dragged. Only runners and dog people and seagulls are on the move.
We drive eight miles north up the east side of the island, climbing Purgatory Road, winding down to Sachuest Beach, along Hanging Rocks Road and onto Indian Avenue. Our journey takes us out of Newport, through Middletown, into Portsmouth and farm country. Horse country.
We take the back road onto the farm, winding through the shadows of tall trees dripping dew and wisdom, bumping over potholes, shifting gear where the road bottoms out and the stream trickles.
It seems we’re not so early today. The horses have been turned out. Unblanketed, naked, happy, they sway in their paddocks under the early sun. I call to my horse in my version of her nicker, blowing out through my lips, and she lifts her head and turns to me. We meet at the gate and bring our noses and foreheads together in a silent Maori greeting. Sachem is blessedly not pulling at his leash, so in awe is he of this enigma on longer legs than his.
—
A morning walk in the fields above the paddocks is a hard thing to beat for its medicinal properties. Birdsong in the bushes and the scent of grass that was cut at yesterday’s sunset. The groundskeeper left a subtle, artful cluster of waist-high wildflowers in the middle of the trail, and another in the meadow, and they fall over each other in witness of his stewardship. Milkweed, fireweed, pickerelweed. Ox-eye daisies. Wild bergamot. A tangle of purple, eye-bright white, and egg-yolk yellow. I walk around this colorful small wonder twice, clockwise, my fingers brushing the petals and the fronds of soft grass.
—
On the drive home a rabbit runs into the road in front of the car and I slam on the brakes. The rabbit stops on the center line. A car approaches from the opposite direction: I flash my lights and the driver slows to a standstill. The rabbit sits, motionless, for half of a minute—a long time for humans to wait—before continuing across the road and vanishing in the undergrowth. The driver pulls away, waving a hand. I’m glad to have had a companion to witness the rabbit’s moment of pause.
Back home, off the long leash, Sachem plays by himself in the garden with a rope toy—chewing, tossing, chasing, catching. Mostly oblivious to the things I witness, he is embarking on his own expeditions. At this early age he can be surprisingly self-sufficient, as long as I’m not far away.
