By Dan O’Brien
It is my favorite time of year. I would put a Great Plains’ autumn up against any other season, anywhere on Earth. Spring in Paris, summer in Tahiti, winter in the Alps – no comparison.
Three nights ago the temperature made a surprising dip. The internet was predicting a cool evening but thirty-eight degrees is cool indeed for the first days of September. We have no air-conditioning at the ranch so Jill and I are used to sleeping with doors and windows wide open. There are only the screens between us and the summer nights, the pulsing of insects, the calling of moon birds, and the eerie awareness of night walkers. It is a grand way to sleep but on that first cold night we found ourselves groping in the dark for an extra blanket.
We woke to a different world that most people would not have noticed. It was warming again by eight o’clock so it would have been easy to write off the magic night as an anomaly, a small divot in an otherwise seamless summer. But there was a subtle difference. The flies were suddenly slow enough to catch easily. The horses loped up to the coral instead of trotting. The sky seemed higher and a deeper shade of blue. The buffalo in the distance played in smaller groups ready for the wheat grass to turn ocher. But the obvious difference, the thing that made me absolutely sure that I had not dreamed the shifting of celestial gears, were the bird dogs. With them, it must have something to do with the smell of things. I imagine the wafting of scents as colors, made more intense by the coolness, a yellow cloud moving from the sage brush, the mauve of the river, puffs of orange in the hoof prints of deer, and the filmy blue traces of grouse coming from the upper benches. To a bird dog those lacy, indigo tentacles meandering on the breeze is a calling every bit as strong as John Donne’s tolling bell. I don’t believe he, or Ernest Hemmingway for that matter, would mind my tweaking of their words to fit the landscape. No bird dog needs to ask for whom the bell of misty grouse breath tolls. It tolls for them, of course. And when I approached the kennels, no sleepy, stretching hounds emerge from the boxes. There was electricity in every dog. The youngsters were ecstatic; the old dog’s ears were miraculously keen again.
I smiled and put my hands through the wire to try to pet Trixy and Al. They are leaping puppies and I could barely touch them. Their nascent bond with me was over powered by the promise of movement on the cool morning air. But Henry and Tootsie know better than any human ever could. They are both over eight years old and have long ago earned the run of the ranch. It is the old dogs that bring me to my knees. They sidle up to where I kneel and I hold their heads and rub their ears in the special way that the years have taught me they love most. Henry rallies to my touch. His long, setter tail whips and he gallops briefly in place. Only I would never notice the limp that has been getting worse since November of last year. Tootsie stares intently into my face in a way that disguises her failing eyesight. On this morning, after that first cool, life-giving night, the cloudiness is gone from both of their eyes and I recall their glories: the time Henry was found in a patch of grama grass, only a few hundred yards away from where we had last seen him, still strong and solidly on point after nearly an hour of searching. I can still recall the cackle of those grouse as they rose in front of him. And the late-season, wet, snowy day when Tootsie found and retrieved to hand the bird that four other dogs had missed. I recall scores of days when they ran to near collapse to find birds for me alone. How I knew that a single word from me would have sent them out for yet another grueling cast.
On that morning after that first tantalizing, cool night I sat on the ground, flanked by two old, failing friends and helplessly took the measure of passing time. The buffalo moving near the river are eternal, but the life span of a dog is too short. So too is the life span of a man.
The grouse season is still a month away and I am not sure that Henry and Tootsie would be strong enough for another year. Trixy and Al are poised to begin laying down their own memories. I hope to see them become legends. But a man of my age never knows, it could be up to my future son-in-law to see those two to glory. I forget about the young dogs and reach out to hold Henry and Tootsie’s heads close to mine. I bury my face so that a few tears soak into the curly hair of their necks. There we sit: Three old fools, thankful for the alchemy of the cool evening and hoping for one more, good season in the mottled grasses of autumn. We think about the breezes that will soon sweep across our land, the iciness of October stars, the way it all smells, the road-whine of the old truck tires as we make our way home – my head nodding and theirs gentle on the pickup seat.
They do a better job than I do of hiding their emotions. They pretend they don’t see that I am getting older too. Their love for me is the purest thing on the planet and they refuse to notice that I do not see as well as I once did, that I have a limp of my own.
There are a million things that could keep a man from enjoying another Great Plains autumn. But none of those things are going to stop me before Henry and Tootsie refuse to respond to that first cool autumn night. I’ve got responsibilities this time of year. There is no time for bad knees, stiff shoulders, heart attacks, or strokes. Very soon there will be another cool night – perhaps even a light frost. And when it comes I will reach for the extra blanket and sleep an extra hour, so that I am ready to spring from bed with the sun. I will forget all that measuring of time. I will go to the old dogs and we will bounce like the puppies. We will pretend to be as eternal as the buffalo.
Comments 25
Very lovely, Dan. Made me tear up, too, thinking of my dad and his Brittany Spaniels, Toby & Betsy.
Man is the finest friend of dogs…
Thanks, Dan. Have a nice autumn with all people, animals and nature you love!
Sincerely,
Dom
Poignant! I too had to grab an extra blanket. My dog has a better time hiding his emotions. The passing of time is punctuated by that first cold night. Just returned from my daughter’s wedding and we feasted on your Buffalo in NJ. Thanks for keeping them wild. Loved the meat!
Nice thoughts regarding the loveliest time of the year. Kathy and I are off to the South Pacific for 6 weeks, so we will miss the North Georgia beginning of fall.
bill day
Wish you’d stop writing stories that make me cry. No, actually I don’t….
Dan,
I loved the way you blended color and scent for how your dogs sense their surroundings. Here in Kansas and Missouri, our birds of choice are pheasant and quail. I have yet to have the opportunity to hunt grouse.
Thanks for your heart and soul in this writing!
Don
Tears running here as well . As my friend , my pal of 15 years , Chris, is nearing the end of her life . Such a wonderful dog to me she is . Not so nice to others but I always knew when her and I camped together many times that she would lay down her life for me . One day this spring my daughter in law and I and Chris took a long walk in the willows looking for moose antlers after a long long long winter in Big Piney WY. And Chris could not make it back . We had gone to far . So we rested on the trail …..she would lay down and I would sit beside her rubbing her ears with tears falling onto her head . This was the first time she couldn’t keep up with the pace . We had to stop several times on our way back to my camper …it hurt soooo bad to see her like that ….. she was always soooo ready …all I had to do was pick up my walking stick….and she did her dance …. and wooo woooo woooooo of excitment . Now she is totally blind ….so very thin…it hurts sooooo bad to see her like this . But she is always happy , tail wagging , she is eating very well and drinking and all her bodily functions seem to be working fine …. She’s just skin and bones and can’t jump into my truck anymore …. Me my dog and my truck …..we were a threesome ….and yet time goes on . Thank you for your letter …. I loved it so much .
I’d say it is my Florida allergies that have me snifflin up but you know better.
Dan,
That was beautiful, and I too have an old dog, Molly,
she’s eleven, has arthritis in her right leg..slowing down a bit, our walks have become shorter, slower, she smells everything…She’s teaching me in her old age how to enjoy every scent, every flower, hell, she’s teaching me to even enjoy the turds in life! But then she’s always been much wiser then me.
Best to you and your old friends.
Audrey
Thank you, and a old friend Fritz, who is not here.
U R an amazing man and writer Dan ,and you will be eternal thru the things you have written. At least in my mind. Jim Dandy was a great brit with that expression only shared by a person and their good dog ,brought to mind ,sadly. Linda Forrester, sorry about your aged dog, but adopt or rescue a young one, ASAP. Its the right thing to do!
Nice piece. Especially poignant, I think, was the evoking of the pure love dogs have for us: I tell people that Snicker, my chocolate lab, loved me more than anyone else had ever loved me, even my Mom. Still miss her. May reciprocate with my piece from “Runner’s World” about running with dogs and what it meant. Much. Have a good fall.
All of the above – and then some. Thank you.
Georgene
I am rather emotional these days because of the loss of my mate three weeks ago so your writings aroused my senses so that I felt present with you. Me and my dog Chief are alone now and he is old, slow, and he shows his age and he hurts just like me. I am always inspired by him when he shows his love in a dog’s special way and I cherish the time I have with him and the time I have to be with him. Thanks for the inspiration. Jerry
Thank you and amen.
Dan and Jill. Love to keep up with the goings on. And Dan, your story about your dogs is the most poetic and touching masterpiece on that subject that we have ever read. Wonderful.
Thank you for eloquently expressing what so many of us know and feel — that unconditional love abounds in the in all seasons among our beloved critters.
David
Tears of knowing…fall from my eyes..they remind me that time slips away from us, and to take every day to its fullest, Your words are beautiful Dan!!
Wonderful. Dogs and man are really the dickens for pure, deep love. I lost Will, another English Setter and running maching last spring. This morning, I am about to don running shoes and try the woods for second time with new golden doodle, Oliver.
“Man is born, has 6-7 dogs and dies,” said a wise Roman phisospher two thousand years ago when trying to summarize the essense of mankind.
Thank you for your gift of words and all the visions you bring to our eyes with them, Dan. You and Jill are heroes to my Chuck and me ~ and it’s pure magic to know you through your words and your buffalo and your dogs. Both of us can only echo what’s already been written here by your other friends ~ and thank you for every beautiful thing you bring to the planet.
Tim & I just spent a week at our prairie parcel and yes, morning crispness nipped at us a bit as well. But there is absolutely nothing better than a deep breath of that clear prairie air, is there? We look forward to returning permanently to where are hearts are at. Meanwhile, we sure enjoy your writings and web site.
Tim & Billie
On Judgment Day, I plan to demand an accounting from God as to why people get so many years and dogs so few.
Nicely said, Dan.
Dogs, they know us better, perhaps, than we know ourselves. My wife gives our dog his bisquit before going to work at 7AM. He whines quietly outside the door in anticipaton. He knows I dont like him whining. When she is gone, he wont whine, but waits patiently. At 10 AM yesterday he was acting up…little yips…prancing around the yard…looking expectantly at the door. It dawned on me. He had been waiting three hours for that darned bisquit. He knew he wasnt supposed to whine, but also knew I wasnt keeping up my part of the deal.
Dan, Always love your monthly musings. And they do always make me cry. They always make me feel like I am right there, where every you are. I grew up watching my father and his love for hunting with his dogs. And it is clear there is a special bond. Very nice story Dan. Thank you, Kim
Dan,
An essay for the eternity of memories that great dogs have brought to so many. I know my tears still mingle in the fur of my dog laid to rest along the mighty Mo. Yet her spirit mingles with the ‘filmy blue traces of grouse’ out on the prairie. Thank you for taking me back there tonight when I had that bounce and Nelly drifted across the sea of grass.