Snowflakes on snowflakes

Since Dec. 28, snow has fallen.

Traffic slows, newscasts get frantic and life goes on.

The dogs love the snow; the salt they hate. I take them out in the evening after the plows have been by and in no time, one paw after another is daintily lifted up and held, awaiting a soothing rub to dispatch the stinging salt. I have decided to call these moments of need "poor paws."

Needless to say, our walks are short. Yet life retains its rhythm. I say hello to neighbors, even on those brief walks, who are shoveling snow or taking their own dogs out for a break. The owl hoots at night and I wonder if he is lonesome. The flakes continue to fall, silently and beautifully, and enthralling against the dark sky. The clocks tick, the alarm waits, and the days grow longer, if only by seconds.

And my husband is another day closer to coming home.

Keeping normal

My husband and I have often asked each other, since August 2001, when we adopted our first greyhound, Anni, how we ever lived without dogs.

Without, for example, the lovely yellow dog, Holli.

Well, for one thing, there was a bit more

sleep. And a bit more money. We also didn't know the fun, pleasure and joy we were missing. And the new rhythms they would bring to our lives.

I can't say I get a lot of exercise walking my dogs. I'm often a scarecrow, arms spread and lengthened by leashes, with one dog sniffing in one direction, one in another. We stop, go, stop, go. I sometimes try to imagine the worlds they bring into their brains through their noses. But I like focusing on them, on what fascinating things they see, smell and hear. I've learned to go at their pace (Cesar Millan would not approve) and as they investigate their world, I take the opportunity to ponder and observe mine.

My husband has been in the hospital this week. Family, friends and coworkers have been tremendously supportive, offering comfort, coffee dates, dinner, prayers and pet care.

I've turned down the generous offers of dog-walking because it's one thing I can do that is normal and routine.

Tonight I came home late after being at the hospital. It was dark and I made a phone call to my sister Elizabeth before bundling up and heading out with Twist and Holli.

Finally night has become cold -- my finger tips were chilled even through my thick gloves. The moon was a watery white disk faded among slate black clouds streaked with silver. There was a sharp scent of chimney smoke in the air, and, for a change, no owl could be heard hooting.

I like listening to the dogs as much as I enjoy their company. Twist likes to make the occasional snort into a pile of leaves. Holli has a deep-into-her-chest pant. As we walk, their toenails click click along the asphalt of the street.

Home again, both expectantly wait for their post-walk, pre-dinner treat. Inside, we all still wear, ever-so-briefly, the pungent drift of smoke from the cold night air.

Hawk with squirrel

I can't imagine what it was like to live without dogs and without a park just steps from my door.

If I did not live by a park, I never would have learned to recognize the beautiful shagbark hickory, or the gorgeous flowers of the tulip poplar.

In the winter, Carl and I love to sit in the living room and look out over the dense black spread of tree canopy across the street, sometimes covered with snow, sometimes so black against a deep, deep sapphire gray evening sky, sometimes lit by lightning.

I love that the dogs and I can wander in and kick dry leaves, listen to the sounds of jays, nuthatches, thrushes, owls, woodpeckers and yes, crows, because the even the raucous caws of crows tell a story.

I love that water from somewhere deep underground makes a permanent, tiny little stream at one end of the park, just a drizzle really, from the top of one treed slope down to the bottom. It's barely there, now, because it is so covered in leaves, but the flow still ripples, creating a tiny pool that the dogs like to lap from.

I love the contrast between the traffic that zips along the street, always rushing, oblivious and too fast to a destination, and the life in the park, equally oblivious but somehow more ... purposeful?

On Thursday, the dogs and I walked down into the park and immediately off to my left a motion caught my attention. I turned and into my full field of vision a hawk lifted up, a small creature in its talons. Off it flapped, but not too far and I thought if we walked quietly enough we might get close enough to see what it had caught.

Then I heard what sounded like, very far away, a baby crying. It wasn't though, of course not.

Also to my left, in a bare tree, was a squirrel, looking down at us and quietly making that chattering sound that angry squirrels make. Except it was not a rat-a-tat chatter, it was more like the single notes, repeated slowly, over and over.

The squirrel saw us, flipped head up quickly and dived into a hole in the tree. The head poked out and watched us, now silent.

I had to wonder if the small creature had seen its companion taken by the hawk, which we saw, again, lift up from the leaf litter with a lifeless shape in its grip, and flap away to another end of the park.

Another hawk glided behind it.

I though about how days start and end, with the expectation that life will continue on as normal, uneventful. Thankfully, most days, it does.

We continued on our way, kicking the dry leaves and smelling the cinnamon scent of fall.

Owl, again

My neighbor Masha, a young native of Ukraine, met up with me a the 36A stop from Downtown to Mt. Lebanon late this afternoon.

She had been off for a few weeks for a trip to Paris with her husband and then on to Ukraine to visit her parents. We talked about her trip, (her first time to Paris and she adored it) and other things, including whether I had any book recommendations.

Sadly, having checked out Jayne Anne Phillips' "Lark and Termite," I could only report that I had started it a couple times and had been unable to finish. Not for lack of interest, but for lack of time. I returned it, overdue. I hope to get back to it someday.

When I am bereft of meaty reading material, and bereft of time, I return to old favorites that do not require a lot of concentration.

My "Peanuts" collection is a great source of non heavy-duty-brain-cell-sucking-energy-before-bedtime-reading-if-I-don't-have-anything-else-going-on reading. I love Charlie Brown!

I like to retreat, too, to old favorites. This week I have been re-reading "Owl," by William Service. It is a lovely story of a small wild creature, never a human pet, living its life within a human family.

I like it, in part, because I have been listening to the Owl(s) in the park by our house. Two weeks ago, at 3 a.m., I woke up (being past 50, that happens a lot). In fact, an owl woke me up, Who-Who-Who-Who-Who-ing. I crawled out of bed, poured some milk or wine, crawled back in and just listened for about a half hour in deep night.

Tonight, at dusk, the dogs and I went out for our evening walk. As we strolled in the gathering gray, Owl hooted and I spotted him, high up in the park canopy, a dark, distinctive shape in the fading light.

He hooted, his horned head bobbing forward and back, forward and back.

We stood below, me (at least) very attentive. He saw us; the tilt of that horned head changed and then wings extended and he flapped, slowly, away.

As we walked up the street out of the park, I listed to his call, and not much further away in the park soccer field, the hooting of parents cheering on their kids with calls of "good game."

And all the while in the background, the crickets chirred, really softly, marking the end of the season.

Summer night

I love the sounds of late summer.

Nights have been so cool and, oddly, the days seem to be getting shorter much earlier than normal.

Here's what I heard in Bird Park tonight and last night: Two owls, hooting at each other. Drowsy crickets. A blue jay, flapping above in the twilight, singing. Chirps and chatters all around.

Summer gets so quiet as it winds down. In fact, it matches the beginning of the season, quiet. Late June, July and through mid -August are the noisiest times of the season, but living creatures seem to know that as the light changes, the days grow short, as does their time as well.

Is there a human analogy? I think so. We all wind down and make less noise as our seasons on this planet circle to a close. But we pay so little attention to each other in these matters, so that when those near us are winding down, we are distracted, frustrated, rarely present to the moment.

Life is so busy, so stressful. I'm glad I have the chance, everyday, to walk outside and listen to the other creatures of the world going through the circles of their time here.

An apology, and a quiet moment

I have a few things to write about today, when all of Pittsburgh and the Steeler nation diaspora is glued to the Steelers-Chargers AFC playoff game. Even now, at Heinz Field, a man is walking along a yard-line spraying snow off it.

I'll start with the hard issue first.

The day after Christmas 2008, my husband and I went to the funeral service for a coworker who had died, at age 54, of lung cancer. He was a kind and gentle man, a runner and nonsmoker and a thorough and compassionate reporter.

The service was at 8 p.m., and Carl and I were to get up the next morning and drive home for an abbreviated Christmas with both of our families. Three former coworkers spoke first after the pastor led a prayer. They were eloquent, tearful and funny. A friend from his church spoke next, briefly and kindly.

Then the pastor got up and began with these words: "I'm a pastor, so forgive me, but I've got an audience so I've got to speak."

He proceeded to talk about my friend's acceptance, some years past, of Jesus Christ as his personal savior, then began wandering all over the proselytizing landscape. He spoke for a half-hour and it was barely about my friend. I could not stand it. My right foot started tapping. My husband and I rolled our eyes at each other. I got the giggles. The woman next to me whispered "This is so inappropriate."

The only good thing is that we were sitting in the back. I felt like Mary Richards at the funeral for Chuckles the Clown, although that is an entirely inadequate comparison.

After the pastor was done trying to win new converts, he led an eloquence-challenged prayer and the service was mercifully over.

Most friends and coworkers there agreed the pastor had gone too far. But his son's father-in-law came up to me and asked how I knew our friend. I explained my relation to him and the others who had stood and spoken for him. What a gentleman he was, but, and I have no idea where he was sitting or if he witnessed my stifled impatience, he merely asked and then thanked me for attending.

Here's the deal. I don't go to church. Organized religion is not for me. I was baptized as a Catholic and still have an affection for the Latin Mass rituals of my childhood. I will duck into church Downtown to pray for my Dad on his birthday, but as I've gotten older, my attitude has been to be thankful for every good day and to try to be kind and generous as much as possible. Just don't preach to me.

So my lesson learned -- and I knew this already -- is to remember that not every situation is about me and to have respect for the beliefs and wishes of others. A week or so after the funeral, I spoke with a coworker who had sung at the funeral. He, too, felt the pastor had gone to far. But he also said that he had no doubt that our friend had planned everything (in fact, he contributed to his own obituary). And that was what I had failed to realize. My friend, I'm sorry.

***

Already the days are getting longer, though still not to the point at which I can walk the dogs in daylight morning or evening. But going out at dusk or before dawn means the owls that live in the park by my home are hooting. I love hearing them call back and forth to each other.

Friday morning, the girls and went out and were serenaded by the familiar "Hoo-hoo-hoo... hoo hoo" being called back and forth. The really cool thing is that last spring, I actually saw a baby owl in the park. That's him/her at the top of the page. To hear that call in the quiet of the evening is quite something.

A few years ago, on Thanksgiving day, I was taking the girls for a long walk before we went over to my brother-in-law's home for dinner. We were actually outside of the park, but I happened to look left into it and saw a huge shape on a tree trunk. It had a crested head, and I saw a flash of red. Before I could get too close, huge wings opened and it flapped off. When I got home, I checked my bird book and realized I had seen a pileated woodpecker. My sister Elizabeth remembers hearing them frequently when she would walk her dog in D.C.'s Rock Creek park. They don't so much peck as they do pound trees. And their call is just as rackety.

We stopped on our way back home tonight so I could listen to the owls. I think the dogs were listening to other things, but we all enjoyed the moment.