Snow – Walks With A Dog

Snow evokes a number of images and memories, from childhood to seasons of adulthood. From days off from school when kids in the neighborhood reveled in exhaustion and excitement sledding down streets and hills; to the time Vickie and I took a seldom – used back road home in a snow storm and weren’t sure we’d make it up a particularly challenging hill; to the time the snow in Becket, MA came in November and didn’t leave till April…or was it early May?

My most pleasant snow memory is walking in the woods with Darby, our Sheppard – Lab mix, in the deep snows of Western Massachusetts in the Berkshires. I’d buckle my snow shoes on and Darby and I would walk beyond the cleared portion of our lot into the surrounding woods, deeper we’d go, the snow often above her shoulders, deeper into the quiet, into the hush of creation. The stillness of the woods after a deep snow enfolds and comforts the senses, it is a blanket of peace wrapping itself around you, drawing you into it, stilling the mind, quieting the heart – it is a place to listen, to listen to both creation and the Creator, a place for a child to commune with the Father.

Darby stayed close to me during these walks, not by my heels, but just off to the right or left or just a bit ahead of me; when I’d call her she’d quickly come, bounding over fallen branches and limbs; I always knew where she was and she always knew where I was and we always knew which way was home.

 A ways into the woods behind our home was a stone wall, the kind of stone wall you see all over New England. The wall had been lonely for many years for it was now surrounded by woods, at one time perhaps it delineated a pasture or crop land, people built it as they cleared the land, but the land was no longer clear and the wall was lonely. For the most part the wall was still intact, while here and there a section had fallen, failed sections were few and far between. Darby and I always walked out to the wall and then we’d walk along it for awhile, in no hurry, just Dad and Darby, taking our time, enjoying each other, in the cathedral of God’s snowy creation, a canopy of trees above us reaching up to the heavens.

Those walks wouldn’t have been the same without Darby; she was a gentle soul, devoted to Vickie and knowing that I was part of the package she got with Vickie she was devoted to me, even though I was the second team. She was most certainly Vickie’s dog, if ever a dog loved a human then Darby loved Vickie, wherever Vickie was Darby was there.

When the snow came down in Becket I’d anticipate my walks with Darby, a respite from the world, from the phone, from the internet, from television…from noise.

While the sense of quiet sacredness was palpable during those walks, at the same time there was joyful excitement and exhilaration in reveling in the white-crystal beauty of the snowy carpet and in leaping over fallen trees and then running with Darby as we headed back home.  

I sure miss the old girl; I sure miss those walks. Darby and the snow…what sweet times.

Darby and Lina are below.