Rich Landers: Faithful Brittany inspired bushel of warm memories
Almost to China,
digging is preferable to stopping
the toil
and turning to the next task.
Tears are not so vivid
and unnerving
now that they splash on soil damp
from deep below
favorite hunting grounds.
A few days earlier,
Radar had made me smile,
rallying to quail scent
in the back yard –
head up, ears perked,
the Brittany’s classic stub-tail
rigid –
a brief flame to a puff of breeze
on fading embers.
Legs that had explored
100 hikes in the Inland Northwest,
devoured the scablands
and swept across the Palouse
trembled with pain.
Eyes that had detected wing beats
on the horizon
were dull as the brass
on a spent shot shell
inadvertently left
on the ground
for many seasons
to mark the chukars’ lair.
The mouth that had eagerly
packed back feathered quarry –
from sage, stubble, lakes, rivers,
blackberry thorns
and basalt scree
in hellish heat or numbing cold –
had no taste for water or food,
except, occasionally, for a morsel
from my hand,
as it was in the beginning,
when lessons were learned
and the bond was made.
Finally, the only similarity
from countless hunts
is his head on my lap –
still,
eyes closed –
as it had been after the longest,
hardest
and most satisfying days.
Radar was no national champion,
but better than most,
better than I deserved.
The only friend I trusted to sleep with my wife.
He eagerly delivered the adventure
of following a bird dog’s nose
through the landscape.
A four-hour hike
on the Kettle Crest
once required all day
behind this dog
in a good year for blue grouse.
I learned early
to be wary
of kicking the brush
in front of Radar’s detector.
Over the seasons, equally staunch stands
revealed porcupines, skunks
and even snakes
that couldn’t make him break
with their rattling.
Orange and white vanished quickly,
as it had many times
over a ridge
or into the cattails,
but now it was under the damp earth.
This time,
the mystery would not be solved
minutes, sometimes many minutes, later
just ahead of Radar
found
locked on point.
I’d learned a lesson
from the last time –
to never again do this alone.
Two setters, tails wagging,
greet me at the pickup,
full of life,
and ready to move on.
I am ready, too.
I swear.
Just give me 40 miles to home,
in the Ford
with 13 years of memories
warming my lap.