I come to the creek path near my house, the one my wife doesn’t like me to walk alone, for fear I might fall.
I see mountain bikes riding through, a leashed triplets of dogs of Goldilock sizes their caregiver behind, struggling to contain their strides.
My husky-chi barks at them, underneath a low growl in the back of his throat threatens to come out.
He pulls me to the path. I pull him back.
The evening concert of cicadas and toads in the overgrown retention pond between is just starting its clicks and croaks.
Hours later, on my beast’s last brief walk of the night, while most life is asleep and the path is still dangerous, I hear their deafening crescendo.
The creek is a gray smear cutting through the golden moon, the canopies of the night.
Only the streetlights, the head lamps of a car turning the corner, show me the way home— but I think, know, only want the path.
A chill rolls in, so to the first drops of predicted rain, of the morning fog and mist to come.
I unleash my dog and he vanishes into the path. I hear the splash of water, the snap of twigs and crunch of leaves that lets me know he had crossed to the other side.
There’s a small squeal, two long beats, and with it, the concert stops, then restarts in a softer refrain.
My beast proudly returns, dropping a field mouse at my feet. I am disgusted, but being gracious, I pat my dog’s brindle head, tell him he’s a good boy. This is his nature and I am helpless to restrain it.
I stuff the creature into a dog waste bag, think of walking to the path, just to where the concrete and forest separate, and pitching it as far as I can, but then realize my dog would just retrieve it again.
My dog snuggles against my leg. I put the mouse in my pocket, pet my dog’s heaving stomach.
The path calls him- calls me. I clip the leash to his harness, prepare for him to tug me onto the path.
Instead, he spins around without a snarl, and starts to follow the scent trail of home, pulling until the leash tells him that I want to say.
I sit down at the end of the concrete path, my dog obeying my motion, but facing home. My fingers create a lazy trail in the muddy earth.
When it’s deep enough for a small grave, I drop the mouse in, covering the hole over quickly before my dog notices the rejected offering— the present I can not keep or even explain to my waiting wife.
A sadness wells in me- not for the mouse but for steps I will never take- the knowledge that I will fall and never get back home- the knowledge that I will not know the wild path forward, just the hard, white one behind.
