A Walk in the Woods for Two

The Boston Herald

October 4, 1996

The first time we went walking, Al took us. It was spring and the earth was soft, the trees new green and the path that leads from the street to the football field was a straight, clean line.

Al's been walking his dog Dante for years, twice a day, no matter what the weather. I've watched him from my office window. A man and his dog. I envied them.

I had tried to walk Molly at least a million times, but it never worked out. She always insisted on walking me. So I gave up and let Molly hang out in the back yard and every once in a while I threw a ball at her to get her to run a little.

But Al, noticing Molly's increasing girth, told me that Molly really needed to walk.

"Walk with me," he said. So one day I did. I put Molly on a leash and let her drag me down the street and down the path into the little bit of woods still left in my town. Al set Dante free there and urged me to do the same, but I was afraid because what if Molly headed back toward the street? What if she ran away?

"She won't," he said. And she didn't.

The first day Molly was free she practically skipped with joy. She raced through the woods, onto the football field, splashed in puddles, across the softball fields and disappeared in the high marsh grass, sniffing and snorting and smiling. I worried about getting her back on the leash. I worried that she wouldn't come when called.

"She will," Al said. And she did.

The next day we went out again and the day after and for a week this went on. Then one day I took her for a walk alone.

Molly was slower alone. She lingered in puddles, explored under the bleachers, inhaled every inch of the ground. She approached strangers, too, strange people, strange dogs. The people petted her. The dogs sniffed. A few, people and dogs, ignored her. She didn't seem to mind.

We walked almost every day, all spring and all summer. We saw a house built at the end of the path, land cleared, a hole dug, a foundation poured, the house framed, then there suddenly, a beautiful thing, that seemed to have sprouted from dirt.

We saw the path cordoned off, a "No Trespassing" sign nailed to a tree with an arrow directing us to a new path, cut by the town. For weeks Molly continued on down the old path, through what overnight became someone's backyard. Once she crashed a barbecue - the woods smelled like hamburgers, who could blame her? - and came back with ketchup on her nose. Once she devoured a box on Munchkins left on the ground by some partying Girl Scouts and just last week she helped herself to a pizza compliments of the field hockey team.

She hasn't lost a whole lot of weight on these walks.

But what she's gained is the world outside her back yard. It's fall and we continue to walk every day. It's the same path, but it's different, overgrown now, all the yellows and purples and pinks, shades of gold. The sun is lower in the sky, the shadows longer, the light clearer. The kids are wearing sweaters, not T-shirts and playing football, not baseball.

In the spring Molly chased a rabbit through the woods. Yesterday she chased a squirrel up a tree. In the summer, five white ducks came squawking out of the marsh as she jumped in. Yesterday she raced through that marsh with a beagle.

"It'll be winter soon. The snow will come and we won't be down here," a jogger said yesterday.

Even Al doesn't go down the path in the winter. The snow is too deep.

But I've bought high boots because I have lofty intentions. I've loved these walks. I don't want them to end. I've loved even rainy days on the path. I have a feeling that with my dog beside me, I'm going to learn to love winter there, too.