THE COLORS OF SUMMER -- OR, LITTLE LOST BESS

It’s inevitable, you know -- losing the pup. Does anything strike terror to our hearts like a missing puppy? Okay – it's not as bad as losing a kid. However, I no longer have a kid I need to worry about – at least not in that way. But I do have a young but independent pup.

Mike left at 7:30 Thursday morning (July 18), riding off into the sunrise on his dirt bike for another wonderful wilderness adventure. The cache he placed two years ago at Indian Post Office Lake was reported missing, and he wanted to tend to it. I stayed behind with a map of his route – and two dogs.

Nellie knows that when Mike leaves, he doesn’t necessarily come right back. Our habit has been to take a distracting walk and then settle down to wait. So I picked up the camera, my cell phone (in case I fall and can’t get up), and called to the two dogs. We headed off down the lane, little Bess running at Nellie’s side.

At this time of year the bright colors of spring turn a strange shade of dull. The vibrant, fluorescent yellow of the rapeseed fields fades to common yellow. The green of wheat and barley slowly dries to something nondescript until the rich amber sets in. The garbanzo beans give us plenty of green but it lacks the dramatic effects of grain slowly ripening in the hot sun. Colors are further muted by the smoky haze caused by regional wildfires.

I was pondering all this as I walked along. I thought of Chris exercising every morning and enjoying the benefits, and I walked all the harder up the steep pitches. (Puff, puff, pant.) At the top, I doubled back into the neighbor’s property for some different views of the land. It makes the walk more interesting – and I think it makes the pictures more interesting, too. Just a few feet higher or lower, to the left or right, makes an old subject new. The dogs were right there at the drive playing around some stacked hay bales. Then I was aware of “them” as “they” explored the edge of the field. I swear I was absorbed in taking pictures for just a minute and the two of them were together, but when I turned around to leave, only Nellie was there. No Bess.

“Here Bess,” I called. Useless. She still responds to “Bess” with a look that says, “Who? Me?” I listened for rustling grass. Nothing. Nellie was more or less disinterested in my plight. I thought she knew something she wasn’t saying and I couldn’t blame her. She was enjoying these moments of freedom without that pesky Bess, but she stayed with me.

We made a tour of the neighbor’s shop area, just in case, and then I tried to think like Bess. Bess doesn’t really like these walks, I reasoned. And though she’s independent, she’s not ventured much beyond familiar territory. While I could envision her tumbling through the scrub brush and running into the trees on the other side of the gully and then lying down to take a nap under a distant pine, that scenario really was unlikely. But if she got tired and thirsty, chances were she would just go home. So, I decided that Nellie and I should do that, too – go home and start from there. It’s been a long time since I walked up the lane that fast! 

 

I didn’t see her at first and my heart sank. But there she was – curled up in the dogloo on the porch, looking back at me with sleepy eyes. KW