20 December 2008

How's the field feeling?

So people keep asking, do I still go to Lighthouse Field, even after the whole court thing?

As a matter of fact, was out there yesterday morning. Seemed like a safe bet, was raining, no one should be out there, right? Go let the dogs run around in the rain, like we always do when it rains. Always did. Wet and unpleasant and cold and muddy and usually, no one else there except for maybe one other nutcase, parka all a-flap, and their dogs. The team speeds through the grass, over the logs, through the bushes and across the mudhole ponds. While I try to keep my feet out of giant puddles and mud patches. Greased up with silty rain water, black dogs look like little missiles with nothing to hit, just sizzling around and around until I call them in. Plenty of room for dogs to get some speed out there and do some running when everybody else stays inside.

Everybody else except a Ranger. In the rain, that would be my friend, driving around a giant white 4wd truck. Slow driving, lights on. Big, heavy, foilage crunching tires. On their new truck roads where there used to be meadows. Maybe looking for campers. Maybe looking for dogs. Whatever they are getting paid to look for, spend a lot of time doing it. The sight of that behemoth vehicle, rolling my way, sends big icy stab of hate through me for the place I used to cross my heart hope to die Love. My whole reason for living where I do. Yeah, I can still go down to the beach, when there is one. Winter tides sometimes leave no beach for months on end. Rangers staying out of our hair there. But the field. This 33 acres of dead grass and bushes and old fallen cypress that I know so well, from visiting every single day, no more. Unless I want to blatantly get my behind another ticket.

Sitting next to a lying cop in court seems to have changed my perspective on walking around out there all ballsy and blatant. Don't want to go through that whole "I am a Crimnal" thing again if I don't have to. Some kind of activist I turned out to be. I just want to let my dogs run around and get tired and wet before having to spend the day huddled together in a plastic box on a cold and rainy deck watching me walk by with muddy horses and listening to my shreiky voice holler on and on about outside rein. Not have to be secret squirrel, agent with a dangerous mission, crouching behind bushes, peering out to see if they drive on. Is a little thing. A little part of my big day. I go do something else for 8 hours, then something else then I'm at home and no good reasons that this 45 minutes of my day should be making me so crazycakes. Plenty of other big picture, big ticket items could be jammed up this craw, trust me on that.

Uh, so I guess the answer would be, yeah, I still go out there. Cautiously, paranoidly, like a hunchy old, shifty eyed, creeper. Peer out from the tall grass, unclip those leashes, let 'em rip. For a little bit. Then fasten them back up, and hustle off to buffalo before the Bright White Dodge Ram Mega Cab Count on It hisses in through a vapor in the not so far off distance and sails up to make my day.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the first time reading this blog first thing in the morning ruined my day.

I went to the beach this morning for the un-official Friends of Lighthouse Field (FOLF) weekly gathering (where we have been neatly herded by all of the sets of powers that be: the City, State and FOLF), and that cheered me up, until on the way home Ariel naturally headed for our normal walk through Lighthouse Field, and I had to tell her no since I thought I could see a white truck on the other end of the field. So now I'm really bummed out all over again.

I guess those of us who regularly used LHF for our preferred form of community recreation will just never get over the disappointment of losing LHF, especially given the way it all came about.

Anonymous said...

And by the way. I think today's blog was simply really, really, really good writing today. When is your first novel coming out?

team small dog said...

You would be the only person to buy it and I would give you a copy anyways. So, uh, never?

Hope your day got better after dog walking and blog reading! Will try to send some boxes of see's your way if new ones come in i don't eat on way home.

Anonymous said...

Measure 8 will be repealed, and dogs will once again run free at Lighthouse Park. These things just take time. Picking your battles is a good way to exist during the intervening gaps, be it months or years.

I know well each and every emotion of which you speak. I have managed to reclaim some of my places by walking late at night, which I realize may not be an option for you, but perhaps knowing there are dogs running free on forbidden land elsewhere is of some use.