Tracks

All photos are by the author

The man and the dog walked, they were the latest to benefit from a 15,000-year-old partnership. The dog wore a harness and was on a leash because of a ½ mile chase involving a squirrel and a near miss with a car on the road. The dog was nothing if not focused. The leash had become a key part of their relationship, a physical connection that symbolized the spiritual one.

As they walked, they looked and sniffed. The man looked for tracks, the dog sniffed each getting a picture of the land that made up their territory and the creatures living there. Looking at the tracks, the man could picture the animals that made them as though they were standing there.

The dog’s nose gave him much more information that he tried to convey to the man.

They came here regularly, observing and sniffing, getting to know the place through the years and seasons. The personality of the land changing like a woman’s mood. Sometimes they would stop in a sunny spot on a south facing slope. The man would sit on a log, and the dog would lean against him, eyes scanning the trees nose in the wind. It was winter, but the weather had warmed. The ground had been muddy but was starting to firm, about the texture of modeling clay. He saw the tracks from their last walk here, five days before. The edges were starting to round, the tread pattern of his boots and the dog’s feet less sharp. The next rain would obliterate all traces of their passing. The earth would continue, not remembering.

In his youth he had lived in a place where the bedrock was limestone and caves were common. Once he had crawled far back into a cave, to a place where white crayfish with no need for eyes lived in a small pool. There were tracks in the wet clay and impressions left by clothing and hands. He had no way of knowing how long the tracks had been there, but there was a bottle of soda in the pool that was of a style that had not been used for decades. The cap was rusted, but still on, and the bottles contents had separated into layers, the syrup settling to the bottom. He had left the soda and the crayfish. They were part of the cave and did not belong in a world of light. He later read that impressions left in the clay floor of a cave could last indefinitely, years, decades, centuries. Still later he saw the ruins at Chaco Canyon. Granaries and dwellings built of sandstone with clay mortar. The mortar held impressions made by the builder’s hands 1100 years ago. He held his hand above the impressions, not quite touching, not quite closing the gap between then and now.

Life had made tracks on him. A bump on a collar bone where it had been broken and healed, scars from work and moments of carelessness, tracks on the inside that only appeared in his memories and how he related to others. Some faded with the years, others remained sharp and clear, all led to where he was now. He was at peace with where he was but regretted that the most important tracks would be swept away.

The dog was getting restless and the low sun coming through the trees told them it was getting late in the day. They followed their tracks back the way they came, the dog pausing to pee on bushes to try and convince the coyotes he was a tough as they were and that this was his territory. They entered the warmth of the house and the leash and harness were removed. The man opened the computer and began to type.