Attention [with] dog — Jan 1, 2023

Jan 1.1

Last night I said to myself, “In 2023 you should try to pay more attention to things.” This morning while walking out the door with my dog Trixie for an 8:30am walk, I remembered saying it.

“What does that even mean? Pay attention to what? Nature? What would that even look like?”

With no better plan, I begin by dictating my awareness directly into a note-taking app on my phone — a loosely narrated stream of consciousness using speech to text. Minimal effort. I’m just telling my phone where my attention is and where it’s going as it goes there.

It’s a pretty standard morning walk, albeit a little later in the morning than usual. It’s unseasonably warm. 50° already and will probably be almost 60° by afternoon. Thanks to yesterday’s persistent rain, the pavement is still wet. Blue sky above, mostly clear except for a low cloud bank along the north horizon. Trixie and I do our usual morning path down Barclay to 26th Street, and then West across to Guilford. The cold snap that hit just before Christmas seems to have killed many of the outdoor container plants.

Not many people are outside, despite the later morning hour. One gentleman is cleaning off his steps on Lorraine as we pass, but the neighborhood is quieter than usual for this time of day. No doubt people are settled into the post-reverie recovery of New Year’s Day.

A handful of birds are active on 26th Street. I can see a bird that’s either a mockingbird or catbird. I know enough to know that the catbird sounds like a cat meowing, and a mockingbird mimics and appropriates birdsongs and other sounds to make its own songs. But maybe a catbird does that as well? Feeling stupid right out of the gate. There is some type of wren as well. I don’t know much about birds, but I know the difference between a wren and a sparrow, I think, though I’d be hard-pressed to explain it. Several other birds are calling from the trees above the railroad tracks, too distant for me to identify, mostly due to my own ignorance.

There is a gap between awareness and knowledge. I can be aware of a thing without knowing what it is, but if I’m going to be listening to birds, I might as well know what they are. There is an app on my phone that identifies birds based on their calls — like a shazam for birds. I played with it a few times last year and then forgot about it until just now, when it suddenly seems useful. It’s intuitive enough that I’m able to grab pieces of birdsong and start attaching names to phrases.

26th Street seems to be the spot where the bird calls happen the most in the morning, and the mild weather has brought out more than usual. A few robins sing out before I reach the corner. A crow calls in the distance as well. Trixie and I take a few extra minutes in the small corner park by the railroad bridge on Guilford and 26th so she can smell traces of other dogs.

I think I hear at least three other types of birds calling, but even with the phone app, I can’t identify them. Juggling the app and my attention will take practice, so I give up for now. Instead of our usual turn up Guilford, Trixie and I continue Westward through the 26th St. Green, a a blocked-off section of street with planters and benches that serves as a neighborhood gathering spot. It’s going to be a beautiful day. I tried the birdcall app again and got a clear audio ID on a Carolina Wren as we reached Calvert. a festive bird call, for sure.

House sparrows are calling the whole way up Calvert. Turning back towards home on 27th St. Trixie finds a dead bird on the sidewalk and sniffs it gingerly. I am more concerned with keeping her away from the bird than with identifying the bird, so we move on. The shuttered convenience store on the corner of Hunter St. has fresh graffiti, but things in the neighborhood seem to otherwise be as they are most mornings. A group of sparrows is referred to as a “host of Sparrows”, and a host of them greet us with a chorus of twitters from a neighbor’s chimney as we reach the corner of 27th and Guilford. Human activity is picking up by the time I get back to the house. A man with a mobile detailing service is cleaning out a neighbor’s car on the corner, vacuum whining high and persistent as we pass.

Jan 1.2

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Second walk of the day, we leave the house at 5:10pm. On the way to the car, I spot an old wasp’s nest high in the tree just two doors down from my house — one that I never noticed before. It’s huge, easily the size of two basketballs. Like a giant scarecrow head, complete with gaping holes for eyes.

It’s not actually a wasps nest — it’s a bald-faced hornet’s nest. To further complicate things, the bald-faced hornet is not actually a hornet, but in fact a type of yellowjacket (AKA aerial bald-faced yellowjacket). If I’m going to try to pay attention, I might as well try to be specific. The nest is abandoned and a bit ragged from the wind and from rubbing against the nearby branches.

Instead of a walk around the neighborhood, we drive down to the Wyman Park Dell to let Trixie frolic, ideally with a few other dogs. The natural geography of the dell sets it apart from the surrounding streets. An oblong well-maintained grassy swale easily the size of a full city block, surrounded and sheltered by steep wooded hillsides and thick underbrush. An ideal spot for an informal off-leash dog park. All are welcome, as long as your dog knows how to be cool. Trixie knows how to be cool.

The ground in the lower section is muddy from the recent rain, with a light smell of decaying wood. The temperature is still in the mid-fifties, with wet dirt and thick mud everywhere. My shoes are suddenly more damp than I would prefer. I thought the sunshine and the mild weather would have drawn off some of the precipitation from earlier this week, but that has definitely not happened. Trixie is hesitant on the wet ground. She does not like to get wet.

A bat is flitting overhead despite the bright afternoon light. It’s probably a Big Brown Bat. A distinctly different species from a Small Brown Bat, which is, well…smaller. Someone ran out of adjectives, I guess. It should have gone into hibernation a month ago, but the temperature at the Dell is less prone to fluctuations than the wider neighborhood, and it’s a mild winter, so the winged mouse is out dancing with the bugs at tonight’s warm weather insect revival. Incidentally, “Warm Weather Insect Revival” is my Khruangbin/CCR tribute band.

The sky is clear with a visible three-quarter moon. The earth’s shadow passes across the moon from right to left, like Arabic or Hebrew, providing an easy way to tell whether it is waxing or waning. Waxing gibbous in this case, with less than a week to a full moon. Down here the smell of decomposing autumn leaves is somehow almost floral in its sweetness. The sun is heading for the horizon, and there’s not much to see, but Trixie is suddenly energized by the mild weather. She’s chasing big fat lazy houseflies and even the few exploratory bumblebees that are buzzing around in the unseasonably warm afternoon air. The bumblebees are ground-nesters — the last of the bees to go dormant in the winter, and the first to wake up in the spring.

Only two other dogs were present when we arrived, and both are gone within a few minutes. There is, however, a small homeless encampment here, two tents at the base of the northwest slope, and four or five more at the far south end of the dell. After a few more minutes we head home — a mere 20 minutes spent on the trip, overall.

As we get home there is another unseasonable buzzing along the adjoining streets near our house, but this one of human origin. Like the bats and the bees, an enterprising dirt bike rider has ventured out to geta few extra minutes of outdoor time while the weather remains amenable.

Jan 1.3

Third walk of the day. The evening is clear and chilly, but not outright cold. A month ago, a neighbor mounted a Christmas-colored disco laser light on the side of his house, and now red and green patterns flash across the street and the nearby houses every time I walk past. Empty sky above, except for a few faint stars and the gibbous moon shining directly overhead. A few contrails are slashed across the sky.

Trixie is watching for cats in the crosswise alleys. Most nights they are more noticeable than the large rodents that also frequent these locales. She is dialed into a totally different class of stimuli than I am. Tonight, her attention is drawn to the thick clumps of dead leaves that surround the trunks of random streetside trees. I’m not sure if she’s smelling other dogs that have passed this way before us, or if she’s paying attention to mice or voles that are taking refuge beneath the layers of leaf detritus. Our late-night route usually takes us up Barclay to 29th St., across to the northern sidewalk by the school and then west along the edge of the school towards Guilford. This is a common path for other dog owners, but we see no sign of them this evening.

Lacking other points of focus, I try to take my cues from the dog. She hears others approaching long before I can, and so I try to watch where she watches, listen where she listens. Tonight the coldness in the air seems to carry the city’s better smells more clearly while suppressing garbage vapor and the other less-pleasant odors of decomposition and decay. The lighter holiday weekend traffic also helps; less automobile exhaust lingers in the air.

Trixie seems hurried and slightly on edge from the sound of distant fireworks; leftovers from last night’s New Year’s Eve celebrations, no doubt. She is not as sensitive to fireworks as most other dogs, but she distrusts them nonetheless. As we approach our front door a neighbor in our path steps aside with his dog to avoid the uncertain complications of canine interaction. We don’t know how Trixie and this dog would interact. We’ve never felt the need to find out.

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