Encounters with the Wild Penobscot ARCHIVES August 2006 Of Dogs and Rivers If you say the word “river” in conjunction with the word “walk” in my house, my dog’s head will lift from whatever dreamy snoozing she’s been engaged in, her ears will lift up, and she will listen and watch us closely for any other hopeful signs that her mundane existence is about to change. Add the word “leash,” with a direct look into her eyes and a particular lift of the eyebrow, and Willow, a yellow lab, suddenly leaps into fits of ecstasy, dancing and prancing intently from one door to the other, winding impossibly around your legs, and not leaving any doubt that a walk by the river is precisely what she has been waiting her entire life to do. Forget about trying to put the leash on, and just hope that no one is walking by the house and that you can slip across the road, over the neighbor’s lawn, and down to the boat landing without incident. The only thing that can detract her attention, briefly, is the equally exciting job of chasing down any passerby, squirrel or human, with a strange mix of ferocity and glee. At the base of the hill and parking lot, Willow will stop with a question: to the woods and the delightful, scent-filled trail? or right down to the water, to swim and tantalize me with sticks? Today, I lean toward the trail, and her nose goes down and she proudly leads the way with her tail wagging madly. While entering the woods, the smell of autumn is already hinted at: too early for me, this not-quite there yet musky, rich odor of earth and freshly fallen leaf, sweetened by late summer blossoms of goldenrod, and the opening of seed pods from wild grasses and fern. I have read that a dog can take in over 200 scents at once, and I marvel at this ability to distinguish between so many smells, to have the choice to follow each one to any source that may remain. Willow winds her way off and on the trail, leaping over fallen branches and logs of birch and silver maple, shaking the dust and dew from stretched out branches of wild raisin and the troublesome, non-native honeysuckle. She makes sudden, mad dashes over the oddly named hog peanut that weaves leaves through and over the multitude of plants that line the trail, and she turns with each new and more enticing scent. I wonder if perhaps it was the resident kingfisher taking a moments reprieve from fishing that left the particular scent that causes Willow to pause and sniff at a branch, or perhaps it was the nearby family of river otters who left that slight indentation slipping toward the waters edge that sends her into impossible throws of dog-sniffing heaven. I have to rely so much on sight, sound, enriched by my imagination, while she knows, somehow, more intently the stories laid out before her. If only she could talk, and share with me her discoveries. Sometimes my husband and three-year old daughter join Willow and I on our river side walks. Wren follows Willow as fast as her little legs can trod over the lumpy and rock strewn soil, and she knows now to hold firm and be still when Willow suddenly turns to run back to us, brushing past Wren’s small frame and causing us to hold our breath each time. After a few incidents of leaving Wren in tears on the ground, Willow has learned better control around this more recent addition to those humans she has given the gift of ‘ownership’ to (and who is the master of who?) – she holds back on her famous football player shoulder move that has taken me down a few times, and manages to not bowl Wren over on the trail. During the play of stick throwing and swimming, there is nothing more fun than the infectious giggle that leads into fits of a rounding laughter that must come from Wren’s belly, when Willow splashes out of the water and shakes out her fur. And then there are the memories of Machias, our dog before Willow bounded into our life. The golden retriever and Australian shepherd mix that my husband, a native Mainer, adopted when he lived in Montana. He named her after the Maine river of course, a name which means “where the water runs swift.” It was to the banks of the Stillwater River, the arm of the Penobscot that stretches around Orson and Marsh islands, that I walked Machias during the last months of her life. The quarter of a mile walk from our former home to the river’s edge at Webster Park stretched the limits of her energy and arthritic legs. She knew where we were headed, and I could not bear the disappointment in her eyes when I would turn back early.  What a sight we must have looked to our new neighbors! We would walk at a snail’s pace down the middle of the road, stopping now and again so I could re-adjust her back legs when they would give way and cause her to stumble. It was always worth it to reach the river’s banks as the multitude of smells and sounds were absorbed into her twitching nose and upraised ears. She would come to life in those moments by the river and remember what it was like to be a young dog again. Her tail would wag, stiff but sincere, at the shadowy antics of the resident squirrels. Sometimes we just sat, me in the park bench staring out at a tiny island of maple and pine, and Machias by my feet, taking in every bit of activity that her faltering senses could absorb. Now it is eight-year old Willow who we accompany to the river – she was born just a stone throw’s away from the Stillwater River. Not as gentle a soul as Machias, she has an independent streak and a different kind of energy. Machias was no trouble in a boat – Willow trembles in her desire to embrace the water, to capture the movement of beaver, the leaves brushed by the wind coaxing her back to the shoreline scents and sticks to play with. Rivers and dogs, dogs and rivers – inseparable in memory, interwoven joys. Judging by the activity I see down by the boat landing, and our moments of intermingling with other dog and river lovers, I know we are not the only ones who would feel somehow incomplete without the fur-covered, sometimes maddening life force that we take into our home, and without the winding waterways that nourish our relationship to the place where we live, and to the others who live here.   ~ Cheryl Daigle Penobscot River Restoration Trust