Last weekend at the cabin was the very end of March and it was snowing when I got there on Saturday. It snowed lightly through the night and there was a good inch of heavy white stuff in the morning, which thawed with a cacophonous, dripping racket once the sun emerged. The view from the cabin porch was transformed from white back to brown by 10:00 AM. It was pretty cool.
I really went through the upcoming set list for my concert with a fine tooth comb, practicing all the tunes and even coming close to blowing out my voice by Sunday afternoon. I nearly sang myself hoarse. Gary Powell dropped by on Sunday evening on his way back from south Wisconsin to St. Paul. We visited and he spent the night and made his way home in the morning. We didn't talk much politics. Good idea. I'm not too awful hot on the congress these days...and despite having given him the benefit of the doubt, I'm not feeling too crazy about the guy he voted for either. But, Gary and I seem to have found a way to keep politics out of our time together, for the most part. We sort of agree to disagree, and don't let conversations get too heated. He thinks my perpective in naive; I think his perspective is naive; and we respect each other's right to be as naive as we want to. It's kind of a beautiful thing.
I have again discovered that love can be a large can of Alpo. The cabin is always a treat for me, so I thought it appropriate for it to also be a treat for Merle in as many ways possible. Why feed him dry when I can use the opportunity to spoil him with canned? It's just once and a while, you know, and I certainly make him earn it with calm, submissive patience. It's a very joyful thing to see his eyes when he knows that pile of stuff is coming his way.He's pretty amazing. The other day on the walk, he dropped over the bank to get a little drink of the spring as I was hearing the sound of ducks. Ahead of him in a small hole sat two pair of domestic mallards. He didn't see them for a time, but he eventually heard and then visually noticed them. His ears perked up and he froze. I said nothing. He slowly, curiously inched forward toward them, nose in the air, trying to get a sniff. The ducks had no fear of him at all and he wasn't projecting any kind of threatening energy, so they allowed him to get within just a few feet of them. Once he had his fill of how they smelled and looked, he just calmly turned around and left them there, coming to me with an invitation to play some more. Gentle soul.
Matter of fact, I have only heard him make something of a growl once. It was later at night when I had let him out for a last pee. I was on the deck in the dark and suddenly heard the tiniest growl. I walked toward him saying "Merle, what in the world?" And there, in the neighbor's yard about twenty feet from him stood a big doe, frozen, her ears at full mast. She took a snort of his smell and bounded of, and Merle, well, he just watched her bobbing of out of sight and then went to the business of taking his last pee of the day. Prey drive? What's that?Speaking of wildlife, we all saw a big black bear on the way both to and from LaCrosse last week. Pretty rare, and the first one I've ever seen locally, despite the occasional report of a sighting. This big guy was rooting around in a cornfield, and cars were parked all up and down the highway, people gawking and taking pictures, as I was on the way into LaCrosse to teach music. Three hours later coming home, same bear, same spot, different gawkers. People say he was back the next day, too. Amazing.
That's about it for the recap. I have to go feed the birds now. C'mon Merle, wanna go outside?
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