Mountain girl+Dog

January is supposed to be cold, yeah?
This morning on my way up the hill, the thermostat in my car said it was 57 degrees outside, all the way to Shorty’s Corner just east of Sandy, where it plummeted to 55 degrees. Damn, I thought. Balmy.
I worked for a couple of hours and then Coop and I went on up to the Farm, where I commenced having lunch and he went off somewhere and rolled in shit. He’s lost most of his puppy. He’s tall and lean like a teenage boy. He’s got long legs and big paws. His little puppy snout is a dog’s. He regards things sometimes now. He makes decisions—as much as a dog will, I suppose. He’s smart, nonetheless. He’s shiny. He’s bad. He’s lovely. I’m smitten with him, obviously.
After the lunch eating and the shit rolling, we went for a walk up Lolo Pass where the road is still closed due to the bridge being washed out from the November floods.
Cooper jumped up into the back of my grocery getter—for the first time. I was proud like a mama when her giant furry white baby ties his shoes unaided. Duly impressed, I drove the whelp up the road for our rainy sojourn.
I can’t tell you what it does for me, that earthy damp smell of lichen and mud and the firs. It is the best perfume, and whenever I smell it I feel grounded, and grateful, and home.
Cooper and I walked at a brisk pace up the slushy road. We admired the kinnikinnick. We listened to the whoosh and roll of the river just the other side of a bank of firs. I’ve never let Cooper off leash before, outside the back yard or the fenced boundary of the Farm. I’ve worried that he’d start running and not come back to me, like some sled-pullers are wont to do. I’ve imagined him diving headlong into the river, and being carried away, breaking my heart into thousands of tiny fragments. Today, I chose to let him go. Maybe he’s been with me long enough to keep coming back to me. Maybe he’ll listen.
He sat like I asked him to, and I unclipped his leash and he trotted off ahead. He realized soon enough that there was nothing holding him back and he bounded off into the snow, about thirty feet ahead of me. He stopped and looked back at me, totally joyful. And then he came barreling straight back to me, said woof, and did it all again, the whole way up the road. My heart swelled. Hot air balloon sized. We went this way for a long time. The drizzle became a downpour. My old jacket all the sudden stopped being water resistant. Cooper and I were both drenched from head to toe as we loped back down Lolo Pass, smelling that piney perfume and rain, grinning like a couple of wet dogs.