An Anniversary...

Sealy - October 21, 2012

I've blogged earlier about Sealy coming into my life.  Whenever people tell me what a lucky dog she was (to have been rescued) I always reply that I'm the one who got lucky.  The truth is that both of us got lucky, I suppose.  She's a happy, happy dog, and being surrounded by her happiness every day reminds me that happiness is there for the absorbing.  It's a perspective, an outlook...

first night - October 21, 2008
(Believe it or not, she's 5-6 months old here, not a baby puppy!  Sealy had been sick for
months in the shelter,  and this was before the surgery to remove the collapsed lung lobe
several months later.)

one year later - October 20, 2009
(Looking ever so much healthier!)

two years later - October 21, 2010
(After a "mock" obedience trial -  novice classes only - with her muzzle beginning to gray...)

three years later - October 30, 2011
 (The freak snow was from a nor-easter!)

Growth

Last June, concertizing in California, I payed a visit once again to Muir Woods.  As a girl, I was taken hiking and camping in the redwoods of Southern California;  later, as a teen-ager and young adult several times I spent time near the coastal redwoods of Northern California;  and when I lived in San Francisco, in my mid-twenties, hiking in the the trails surrounding Muir Woods  (and walking in the woods themselves) was a not-so-secret pleasure.  There is something about these giant creatures that soothes me; it's not just their smell or color, or the softness of the ground underfoot but something far more fundamental: these trees are alive in a way I wish to be, patiently growing—surviving immense obstacles—over hundreds of years,  from sprouts no taller than the span of the palm of my hand to heights of over 350 feet.   Their height are hard to fathom, looking straight up, but earlier that month, about two weeks previously, one tree at the northern end of Cathedral Grove, had snapped at the base, spanning the narrow valley over the creek.  In looking at the tree lying horizontally I had a whole new perspective of what "span" really means.  I put my hands on the trunk, and it was vibrating still, brimming with life force.