prole and Bilbo go swimming
It was my dad's suggestion that I take the puppy to the beach. Lately he's become a big proponent of daughter-dog bonding, for reasons not apparent to me. When I go to the grocery store, or out to Shari's for coffee, he suggests that I take both dogs. Generally I decline, but today I needed to get out of the house, enjoy a cigarette without parent-induced guilt hanging over my head, feel the rain.
And it was raining. This is good, because there are fires raging on the eastern side of this state that need putting out. To a lesser degree, it's good because I've been fiercely missing the rain. The last few days, the lid blew off the world, revealing the uninterested grey sky of fall, the wind whipped the color back into the cheeks of the trees, and the downpour cleared the smog of fertilizer and farm equipment from the air. Today the tempest was dulled a little, but still glorious in its angry insanity.
Bilbo and I drove down Highway 11, which cuts a gnarled path through the fossil rich sandstone of Chuckanut Mountain. Because of the nasty weather and resultant turbulent tide, the park was mostly deserted. A young family were playing in an outdoor ampitheater I have never once seen used in twenty-two years for anything save staging the antics of toddlers bored with the rocky beach. Bilbo pulled me along down the slick incline, under the railroad tracks, over the twisted roots of cowboy beach trees. We went first to the beach that bears the most resemblance to what one expects of a beach. Of course, like many beaches in Washington, it's still not much of a beach. Instead of sand, Larrabee Park has alternating strips of gravel and kelp, punctuated by tremendous pieces of driftwood too gigantic to step over, too slippery to walk along. In this small cove, however, the water comes up onto a more or less flat area, rather than splashing up against four foot tall faces of rock, dreams of slow dissolution ruined.
The pitfall of the beach is that it's better populated. Bilbo is between six and nine months old, some sort of labrador-retreiver-rottweiler mutt, unmistakably runty. Not very bright. If her pitiful intelligence weren't enough, she hasn't been trained properly. She appeared at my father's heels just as he was getting used to the emptiness of his nest and now is allowed to sleep on the couch and gently chew peoples' extremities and is generally far too indulged for the good of the household. Of course, she doesn't cooperate on a leash, either. Given the choice between A.) choking the little dog, B.) being drug through the gravel on my face, and C.) releasing her for a second, so she'd have a chance to work some energy off, I chose C.
That was a bad idea. Once released, Bilbo made it her business to find anyone on the beach she stood a decent chance of being able to knock over, and attempting it. She didn't get anyone down - neither old women with canes nor frightened three year olds - but she did earn me a lot of dirty looks. I caught her and decided we should go to the other side of the park.
Larrabee Park's second beach is the one I prefer. There is no real beach, as such, just a pile of giant rocks cluttering up the base of a sandstone cliff, close enough together that you can move from one to another with a little strategic planning, close enough to the waves to contain countless toxic tidepools. Generally, if the day isn't breathtaking to the point of physically forcing people to find a beach, I find myself alone here.
Indeed, we are the only souls to brave the motley gang of boulders today. With no potential friends to chase after, Bilbo quiets down, and I am able to actually lead her, rather than being dragged, through the hills and valleys of the rocks. Eventually, it's clear that the leash is superfluous, and I let her off to explore. She behaves well, coming back when she's called. We hang out for a while, then it's cold and time to go back. I light up a final cigarette and we walk to the edge of one of the taller boulders. Here the water is further from the natural shoreline, so the waves crsh dramatically against the rock we stand on. At first, Bilbo is scared of the sudden spray, but she gets increasingly curious. I've caught her leash again, and I feel my arm extending to the left. She is at the very edge of the horizontal portion of the rock, positioned to dive.
My instinct is to let go - the water is deep and if I hang onto her leash, I could choke her. I let the leash follow her down into the saltwater.
Her head reappears and for a moment she is swimming, tongue lolling out. Then, illogical little dog that she is, she's ready to come back onto land. This is when we discover she can't climb the rock. She is too far from the bottom to get any leverage, trying to clamber up the side of a sandstone sphere already slippery from the seaweed.
Her eyes get wide as she scrambles, is pulled under, tries again, falls again. I remember being about her age (in dog-years). We were in Oregon, someone's home right on the coast. I was wearing a pink sweatshirt. I had never seen the ocean before. I remember the strength of the undercurrent, being unable to find any anchor to hold myself near the shoreline. I don't know if there are undercurrents in the Sound. I assume there are.
Close to us, there is a tidepool, set in a crevice, lower, closer to the water. I move closer to it, calling her. She looks at me with bewilderment, then gets the idea and swims over. But it seems she had some kind of shelf in the other spot - here she can barely get high enough to put her forepaws on the rock.
She goes under again, this time she completely disappears for a second. Swim, you dumb dog. When she comes back up, I grab her front paws and yank her up.
I am soaked from the knees down. She looks at me, doggy grin stretched wide, then runs off to attempt to topple the children of a group of yuppies who've had the misfortune to wander to this side of the park. Twenty minutes later, I have control of the leash back, and she is happily shaking water out of her fur in the passenger seat of my car.