2004-11-20 - 8:43 p.m.
an image from october
Outside a woman is bent over stretching out to retrieve the end of the leash she dropped. The dog absently keeps walking just out of her reach. The leash is hers again. One more step and the dog stops to pee. Unconsciously she, the dog, looks around while the woman waits.
I marvel at the love we have for dogs whose needs drag owners out at all times of dark nights, and bitter cold days.
I remember my task when we travelled in the trailer of taking Fargo out each night after dinner and just before going to bed. My impatience would crop up ugly sometimes with him, but often it was a relief to take a short walk outside with him. We would smell the Kansas air and stretch our ears to hear the sound of a million stalks of corn in the wind; we braced against the wind that rushed up a hill in Nevada; we skipped across hot gravel in Wyoming and ran across a green field in Idaho; we crunched through the snow in the California hills; we explored a rickety dock in Michigan. For a moment I could escape the confines of family in a thirty-foot trailer.
I think my Mom also enjoyed those moments alone with the dog, as she would sometimes volunteer to take Fargo herself.
