You know by a child’s cry whether the offense or injury is dire, and I swear you know by a dog’s  bark when there is something horribly the matter. I was fifty yards down the hill towards the pond at our ranch in Clay County, Texas, when Birdie, my then young English Setter, started to barking at a new pitch that told me something was gravely wrong. So I headed back up. When I crested the hill she stood alertly looking at me at like she wanted to show me something and like she didn’t really recognize me at the same time. Then she decided it was time to play again, and ran to us, past us and off down the hill I had been headed down with Sally. She ran feverishly, thrilled, to the water’s edge. I followed, thinking I must have misinterpreted her bark, or heard her wrong. I shook my head at the antics of this goofy dog, our first English Setter in a line of Golden Retrievers. To my eye, she was utterly her usual joyful and muscular self, propelling her body through every moment, spring loaded at all times. This was about three years ago.

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My life is still mostly in Dallas. One can become aloof about the existence of death by nature there, surrounded by dark parking garages and speeding buses and people, so many people whom we do not know, and whom we have no interest in really getting to know. We begin to think death comes only from bad people and dreaded slow diseases. But barring a freak accident involving a busy tree trimmer swinging through the canopy who doesn’t see me below and drops a branch on my head while I walk through my neighborhood, my chances of being killed by nature, or association with it, are remarkably slim. Stress might get me. My lifestyle might get me. A thoughtless moment piloting a very large vehicle may get me and others around me. But nature is mostly held at bay, pushed out, manicured down to its least threatening forms. The occasional tornadoes notwithstanding, nature is mostly neutered or paved here. I can be outside all I want without really ever being outdoors, with the flood of life and wild that outdoors should entail.

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