Bear’s walk

“Okay Bear,” I call ahead to her retreating form. “I think we should turn back.”

Bear glances at me over her shoulder. “I don’t think so,” say her big brown eyes. “You don’t have to come, but I’m going on.”

And so we push on through the thickening bush, doing the loop we started last fall before everything grew and grew in the sun at the back of our woods, filling in every space with lush green life.

I worry about Bear getting too tired in the summer heat, but I don’t force the issue, just follow along behind, Murdoch and I, attached by leash, arguing over who gets to go first while Bear is swallowed up by the underbrush and small trees that tumble out of our forest into the full sun.

These are Bear’s walks. Short excursions through our woods into the next patch of woods behind our property, she forges ahead, refuses to stop. She has a plan and keeps going until she reaches the spot, undefined by anything obvious to me, where she sits in a splash of sunshine and smiles into the treetops.