It was perfect fall football weather: sunny and crisp. I thought of all my good times with football and football with my father. A lot of people don’t know I once coached junior high football with my father for two seasons. It was probably our best time together. We even won a few games but that was hardly the point.<\/p>\n
Bonnie and Clyde met me at the gate and Clyde worked up a new crazed inflection in his howling for treats. I laughed and wished I had recorded it.<\/p>\n
We made our way through the pasture. Cows had grazed it to stubble except for a few lonely nettles with fluffy seed heads ready to blow. I kicked a field goal or two with the seed heads and split the uprights a hundred times.<\/p>\n
An osprey flew overhead. A log truck rumbled in the distance. I saw lichen hanging from the electric fence. Someone had sprayed herbicide along the fence line. The lichen had survived.<\/p>\n
The dogs flanked me in the field. I pitched them treats as if they were running backs on a sweep play. We reached the river and it barely moved. I could hear only a slight sound of water trickling down the rapids, if rapids six inches deep can be said to be rapids.<\/p>\n
The alders across the river had not yet lost most of their leaves, but the leaves were yellowing and preparing to fall.<\/p>\n
I said to myself: I want to see a damn beaver!<\/i><\/p>\n
The dogs reconned up the bank and I skipped a few rocks. I knelt down and washed my bearded face with my hands in the river. I lathered up my whiskers with water. If I’d brought along my shaving kit, I would have shaved right then and there and pretended a Mountain Man status. I might have even stropped the razor because I love the word strop and once used it in a sentence that read: \u201cI want rain to strop me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I noticed a few flat rocks and started building a cairn. I had no idea why. I am certainly no mystical cairn man in nature\u2014definitely more of a chili-from-the-can fort guy.<\/p>\n
But, I was building. Five, six rocks and then a collapse. Rebuild. Collapse. Rebuild. I picked out better rocks and the cairn solidified. It became a true marker of something I couldn’t name. No one would ever see this cairn. The elk might but so what? They don’t need cairns.<\/p>\n
I suppose I need cairns at this point in my life: everything seems utterly directionless. There is no guide, no path.<\/p>\n
Is there anyone or anything building me cairns? What an interesting question to ask of one’s self.<\/p>\n
Maybe these two old dogs are.<\/p>\n
Clyde came over and sniffed at my pocket for a treat. I stood up, reached inside, and found two. I tossed one to Bonnie drinking from the river and placed the other on top of the cairn. Clyde didn’t hesitate. He gobbled it down. He licked the top rock.<\/p>\n
He did not topple the cairn and that made me laugh aloud on the river. And the laughter felt great.<\/p>\n
(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was perfect fall football weather: sunny and crisp. I thought of all my good times with football and football with my father. A lot of people don’t know I once coached junior high football with my father for two seasons. It was probably our best time together. We even won a few games but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3273,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,5],"tags":[386,206,40,388,387,6,205,52,13,207],"class_list":["post-3272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bonnie-and-clyde-files","category-meditations","tag-cairns","tag-dog-sanctuary","tag-dogs","tag-fall","tag-football","tag-matt-love","tag-old-dogs","tag-oregon","tag-oregon-coast","tag-oregon-rivers","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3274,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions\/3274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}