Going for a Walk

by Donna Schoenkopf

Last night and into this morning it rained. Rained HARD. We had flashes of lightning and crashing thunder. Diego the Dog pressed up beside me with a worried look on his face.

The rain was torrential and I thought of how saturated the earth is after so many snowfalls and freezes. I remembered how I saw Neighbor Jim sitting on top of a John Deere tractor the other day.

“Hey. What’re you doing up there?“ I called out.

“My SUV got stuck,“ he called back.

It turned out that the ground was so boggy that Neighbor Jim got his SUV stuck in Neighbor Steve’s yard.

This is how it happened:

Another neighbor down Cowboy Lane had started a fire to burn branches that had been broken by the Big Freeze. We shall call him Steve #2. Steve #2 asked Neighbor Jim to watch his fire the next morning because he had to leave. Jim said yes. (Neighbors ALWAYS help neighbors in the country.)

Jim gets up early, so at 3:00 in the morning he set out in the dark to check on the fire and on his way back home he cut across Steve #1’s yard in his SUV and got hopelessly stuck after only ten feet. He said he’d never seen the ground so soggy. He said he always cuts across that part of the yard to park his car and this had never happened before. As we spoke he pointed out the four or five inches of water that had filled the ruts. It hadn’t rained or snowed in over a week. It was not so slowly oozing out of the ground and into the ruts.

Now THAT’S a lot of water.

I was thinking about this when I decided to walk over to Orval’s to feed Rosie the Cat. I have begun to love the ritual of going over there every day. I have been able to do most of my Rosie feeding in the morning. She is now relieved to see me. For the last week or so she has meowed loudly out in the brambles when she hears me call and eventually I see her poke herself through the brush until she’s in plain sight. She actually was waiting for me yesterday by the defunct pickup. That’s where I always feed her. I bring her favorites, canned meaty chunks with two handfuls of dry food in her yellow bowl. Mmmmmmmm. Delicious. She has never been able to eat that much in one sitting before, but she sure can now!

So, with all this in mind, and after a hefty rainstorm, I began to plan my walk.

First, clothing.

Today, sweatpants. A tee shirt with a sweatshirt on top. My green bamboo Rebecca socks from Christmas. And my Margo Earth Shoes. (My rubber Crocs will be sucked off by the mud, my boots get too saturated and are impossible to pull off when they’re wet, so Margo Shoes it is.)

It’s a perfect day for walking. Clear, crisp air. It has a bite and a snap you NEVER feel in L. A. Freshness. Moistness. Coolness. Ahhhhhhh.

not Diego the Dog; random muddy mutt

I scoop Rosie’s food into the bowl. I tie up the plastic bag of garbage that needs to go out to the trash can. (The garbage truck can’t make it down my driveway with its curves and overhead branches, so the garbage can is located way out on the county road near my orange cattle gate.) I love walking my trash all the way out there. It makes me think consciously of trash, which is important if you care about the environment.

Off I go.

I step out my back door. The freshness is exquisite. The snap of the air is instant. My whole body reacts with energy and pleasure.

I start down my driveway, holding Rosie’s bowl in one hand, while the bag of trash swings from the other. I look over to the pond and it is brim full. Orange-red mud water sits like a turgid beast in its hollow. Ugly.

I walk along looking to my right and left. On the left is Neighbor Dave’s house, my closest neighbor. It seems like no one’s home. Odd for a Sunday morning. There are a grouping of several bare trees between me and his house. Some of the trees have thick moss growing up their trunks. I peel it off now and then to lay on the north side of my house, the side that gets no sun in the winter and so stays wet. Moss loves it there. I’ll remember to get some on my way back.

I look to the right, my favorite side. My electric line lies buried there with the square transformer planted on the ground. There is a small meadow on that side which is crowded with wildflowers in the spring and summer but today has dried brown grasses poking out of the mud. As my eye travels up that side of the road I see water gushing from under the driveway, thanks to Peewee’s brilliant engineering of a large (FREE!) water drainage pipe when he first put in the road. Wow. I’ve never seen that before! I have always arrived too late after a rain to see the actual drainage. I hurry up to the torrent and watch it gush and flow down the slight grade, through the trees, to the edge of the rocky cliff that hangs above my valley, where someday my son Eric might build his freight car vacation home which will straddle the seasonal stream. Reeds and a huge cottonwood tree and unnamed beautiful plants live down there. It’s lovely.

I walk to the other side of the road to check the water flow into the pipe. I look at the deep bed of leaves which might be clogging it. Sure enough there’s a gaggle of leaves at the pipe‘s mouth, but the water has found its way through them and out of the other side of the pipe. I pull the leaves away from the mouth of the pipe anyway and look back over to the other side and see that the gushing water has doubled in strength. Ahhhh. Satisfaction.

There are water-filled potholes along the way, made by Orval and me when he pulled my car out of the snow bank. When it’s a bit warmer I’ll be back with my wheelbarrow full of gravel to fill them. It’s not something I’m looking forward to, but I know it’s good for my body. And my driveway.

The larger rocks, some as big as a fist, all colors, all patterns, lie here and there. I’ll collect some of those, too, on my way back. Gotta keep Che the Cat out of the planters in the house. Now that he’s a three-legged cat he’s gotten used to using a litter box and he has begun to notice the planters, once digging furiously in my largest one, strewing dirt all over the concrete floor.

I turn right on Dave’s and my driveway. I look to the right and see more water pouring out from under our communal road. It flows through the space that’s covered by the steel that’s been put there as a bridge. It flows in fullness over the flat rocks and gravel, through the bare branches of the saplings, down the hill, in its natural bed to the same rocky cliff that feeds the stream in my valley. It is gorgeous.

I walk on and see a place in the road that I’ve repaired myself. It’s a bunch of broken asphalt that I found in town. I had loaded it into my car trunk and brought it back to keep the road from completely washing out. I had laid it carefully in the ragged, washed-away portion of the road and covered it with gravel, carried by wheelbarrow all the way from my house last summer. But the rains have long ago washed away the gravel and nothing is left but the broken asphalt. It makes the prettiest little waterfall you’ve ever seen. Very Japanese.

On I walk. Through the orange cattle gate, weeds and grass leaning high against it. There’s the garbage can, standing off the side of the road. Huge ruts weave around the area. They’re filled with the same orange-red muddy water as the potholes and pond are. The ruts are from the garbage truck. It has to turn around here. And there’s Dave’s ruts, too. He drives a gravel truck and when it’s soggy out here, boom! There are ruts. They make long swirls in the road. Even THAT is pretty.

I pick my way over to the garbage can, throw my trash in. I see the plastic bag of cat shit hanging from an oak branch off in the trees that I threw there months ago, thinking everything would dissolve into the earth. But no. It still hangs there, a testament to my laziness. A sprig of guilt grows in my chest. But my laziness keeps me from climbing through the barbed wire fence and slogging through the mud to shake it off the tree.

I wonder how long it will hang there.

I start down the yellow sand and gravel county road. It looks great. The sand has held up under major assaults from Dave’s gravel truck, the garbage truck, all the neighbors’ vehicles, rain, snow, and ice. I watched the County Supervisor overseeing the project last spring. Thanked him on the spot. He grinned a big grin under his white cowboy hat and said, “My pleasure, ma’am,” and shook my hand.

I look to my right, to the little grove of oaks that I buried Angela Davis’ dead puppy under. Sadness.

I keep walking down the road, crisp air filling my lungs and brightening my cheeks. Orval’s driveway is on the left. He’s scraped down the huge ruts made by his vehicle and the weather. He’s also plowed a deep furrow, using a blade he’s made himself. The furrow is on the left of his drive. It lets the rainwater flow down to the drainage pipes at the bottom of his hill. And it works! Water is streaming down the hill, tumbling over clods and around rocks. The drive, even though steep, has not washed away this time. In fact, it’s almost dry in spots. I check out a route up the hill before I start.

Up I go, picking my way through mud, water, grass. I get to the top of the hill, puffing, and begin calling Rosie. She knows I’m coming. We have established our routine. Even Orval’s heifers know I’m coming. Yesterday they actually galloped up to the fence when they heard me. Their faces were open and happy and curious.

Rosie sticks her head out from Orval’s workshop. I walk over to the defunct pickup to put the bowl next to its left rear tire. She comes out of the workshop and holds her tail up straight and shimmies it, her special happy-to-see-me sign. We are happy together. I talk to her while she eats. She lets me stay closer today.

I hear Orval’s pickup coming up the road. So does Rosie. She keeps eating as I leave her and go to talk to Orval.

We talk about the heifers and the Angus bull he’s had for three years, named Bubba. Bubba eats out of Orval’s hand, he says. He says he doesn’t know whether the heifers will go to market or get bred by Bubba. Depends on their weight, he says.

I can tell he loves them.

I say good-bye and start back down his driveway, down the county road, into my property, down my driveway, stopping to gather a square of moss and some nice rocks for the planters.

When I get home, I lay the moss gently by the side of the house next to the back door.

I open the door, take off my Margo shoes and throw them under my desk. I empty my pockets of rocks into the planter. Pretty.

Nice walk. Really nice.

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