Disruption

Sample of grass collected during the walk.

I hate the dogs who come barking, biting and bitching as I walk. They hurl themselves down bucolic driveways, from rest on sundecks, snarling and lunging until they hit invisible walls of electricity or lengths of rope. I am peaceful as I go along because that is my mission, the goal of the whole activity to clear the poisonous slackitude from my mind and the road complies. It stretches itself out straight and open with only one big turn which I can easily navigate with my narrow body, narrow dog on narrow leash at my side. I look up and down as I go, noticing the grasses, Buttercup, Skunk Cabbage, the beginning of Indian Paintbrush and so many more silent road residents whose names I don't know. Do they know my name as I pass by occasionally stopping to yell "back-off" at the charging retrievers? What is the point of this walk, designed to calm me if my blood pressure shoots up while my body tenses forming and expelling the words that I launch not really toward the dogs at all but at the house they have emerged from. Hoping the words will drift along with the cottonwood fluff and be heard by the woman who lives there. What I wish she could experience are the jagged spikes as my heart pounds against my chest, feel them like sharp jabs in her temples. As I wait for the car—that I know is approaching—holding my breath as it rushes up to us and meets the dogs now in the middle of the road. Will today be the day they get hit? I am always surprised by how loud I can yell in these situations. It stops the dogs, perhaps saves their lives and I move on following the freshly mowed edge of the road with my eyes but still conscious of my disturbed heart.