Goin' on a 'Woop'
There's treasure out there
With over 5 acres of forest, wetland, and meadow, it’s a good thing to do a property walk several times a week. After-dinner walks or days when we didn’t have time to take the dog for her normal walk route, we go on a ‘Meadow Loop’, a walk that incorporates the entire property. As family language, particularly with pets tends to morph, meadow-loop soon became ‘woop’. The dog knows the word, and it’s one of her favorite activities.
Trotting down to the pond, tail high, our hound loves a good sniffy walk. The idea is to stroll, meander, wander, and observe for us who accompany her. A walkabout to see what’s happening out there. For the dog’s nose, there are a million things to sniff, their sinuses and minds working in ways that are baffling for us to imagine and often try our patience with the intensity of their getting the whole sniffy story.
“… when a dog sniffs, structures within its nose split that airstream in two. Most of the air heads down into the lungs, but a smaller tributary, which is for smell and smell alone, zooms to the back of the snout. There it enters a labyrinth of thin, bony walls that are plastered with a sticky sheet called the olfactory epithelium. This is where smells are first detected. The epithelium is full of long neurons. One end of each neuron is exposed to the incoming airstream and snags passing odorants using specially shaped proteins called odorant receptors. The other end is plugged directly into a part of the brain called the olfactory bulb. When the odorant receptors successfully grab their targets, the neurons notify the brain, and the dog perceives a smell.”
— An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong https://a.co/eWFLCPb. Page 17. (I highly recommend this book.)
For a dog, especially ones that are bred for sniffing out prey, drugs, chemicals, and even cancer, an understanding of the world through sniffing is somewhat like seeing a virtual topographical map out in front of them, but the peaks and valleys are intensities and different types of scent. A dog can sniff in and exhale at the same time. This is their newsfeed of the activity in the area. They know their neighborhood dog buddies who have passed by recently, as well as the coyote, elk, deer, fox, mice, squirrels, and other animals that have been about. We often joke that Tara is checking her ‘pee-mail’. Getting to indulge the news from scent is critical to their understanding of the world.
While she sniffs, we observe.
The pond is the first stop as we check on the ducks, and dragonflies. Perhaps the fish are darting in and out of their hiding places, a snake is swimming for some minnows for lunch (yes, all snakes swim), maybe the turtle has shown up. In winter, fresh tracks show the hunting routes of coyotes and fox.
Stepping up onto the boardwalks through the wetlands now, the summer sounds of Wilson’s Snipe and Red Wing Blackbird are all around us. I try to make sure to look up and out to see if the elk are emerging out of the woods, a sign to cut this walk short, but that isn’t too often. Looking down, the wetlands in the spring and summer months pop up new plants and old familiar growth. Some are so tiny, you have to crouch down to see the little Bog Orchids, just six or so inches high, that might be hiding there, waiting to be found. Maybe we’ll notice many willow leaves pulled together tightly into a ball called a gall, where insect eggs have been laid. We hope to not find any duck nests, as we do not want to disturb them.
The boardwalk ends, and the meadow begins. One of the main things seen first is the scat. Elk, deer, and moose, leave widely scattered ‘elk-duds’ to fertilize the meadow. Thankfully, the dog has outgrown indulging in elk-duds, a large frustration for us in her puppyhood. The meadow is carpeted with many types of grasses and flowering plants. June brings up the gorgeous Mountain Irises, and all through the summer, various plants bloom throughout the growing season. The game is always, ‘what’s blooming today’. The meadow-loop takes us around the Old Man tree, a 200+ year old Ponderosa Pine whose trunk has stories to tell of lightning strikes and snapped branches, twisting growth as the trunk split into several trunks, braided from the wind and storms. Old Man is still quite alive, with a mast (abundance) of pine cones and pollen cones together. I always greet this tree with a smile.
The route now follows the wetland edge, then crosses the boardwalks again, and loops back to complete the circuit of the pond, where the inlet flows in. It was from this point of view several years back, that I noticed the gazebo, had not only collapsed, but twisted under the weight, after many weeks of heavy spring snow. Another good reason to walk the property frequently. That older gazebo was replaced that summer with one that can hold over 2000 lbs of snow. These walks have shown branches or whole trees downed, along with other property concerns that will need further attention.
Back at the pond, though, given the time of day, a spectacular sunset might be forming. It’s worth the pause at the gazebo to watch and photograph. Sunsets after a thunderstorm has passed are some of the best.
Passing the gazebo, a path goes up into the woods, passing the oldest, largest tree on the property, an old Ponderosa Pine whose trunk diameter is over three feet. Just a pup compared to the massive old-growth trees that once grew here, but the largest we have now. Wax current shrubs grow around the base, as they do with many of the other Ponderosas. Often found together, their relationship remains something of a mystery still.
The forest floor is covered in pine cones, pine needles, a great deal of Kinnikinnick, and all sorts of wildflowers. In July, the stunning Colorado State Flower, the Columbine, blooms in clusters year after year. Wild strawberry and raspberry can be found in abundance as well. Mushrooms pop up and lichen forms on rocks and tree trunks. The dog finds sticks to carry and play with, and we need to watch her if she finds a spot where predation has happened, often on the ground under the old snag as the crows clumsily dropped their treasures. A skull, pile of feathers, or even larger carcasses show evidence of what happens during the night in the woods. The Ponderosa Pine forest is more open than forests elsewhere, and it is easy to pass between trees and shrubs. Our forest path wanders no set route as we move toward what catches our eyes. In late summer, bright red paintbrush flowers dress up the forest floor.
My camera roll is filled with all the little and big things we observe on a woop. It inspires much of this writing, and is a massively calming activity to include into an otherwise busy day. It is a treasure hunt, a meditation, a time to look up unfamiliar plants, get ideas, and chat with a family member. The dog has had her fill of the sniff-about news, and we head back in or hang outside to sit and enjoy the evening, hoping to set aside the turmoil of the world for a time, and appreciating the cycles of the land.
Do you have your own ‘woop’? A place familiar, yet ever something to see, to record, to appreciate, to take a wander of a walk and discover in your own neighborhood. We all need a woop to retreat to when the world becomes overwhelming. Tell me about it! May your woop create a fierce sense to hold and protect those places that are now threatened by empty people who have no woop and want to profit off of yours. Hold it, fight for it, we need it now.
📷 All photos are credit: The Abert Essays unless otherwise noted.
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