What Matters

A spring day in Montana means thick cold fog rolling over the hills in the morning, intermittent breaks of sunshine, a flash snowstorm, a warm afternoon, two does and a buck in the back yard, more snow flurries.

The morning's hike started out steep – at altitude – clearly demonstrating to me that I could do more working out as I huff, huff, huffed up the trail. Top of the pass was broad and windswept with wide views of surrounding blue hills, brown valleys, and town.

Dogs were jazzed – a change of venue seems to do that for them – the scents, the sights, the very air seemed to rev them up and they zipped around. I get it, I love the change too. Here the forest is open, no dense understory, just short grass not yet recovered from winter, not yet greening up. Patches of snow and ice in shady spots, the one small pond still had ice at the edge. Nicholai found the remains of an herbivore skull (the teeth tell the story) and curled under a small, gnarled pine tree to devour it.

I wonder if this might be my main man's last trip to the Rocky Mountain state of Montana, my home state. Lately, he pants more often and snores more loudly. A few of his lymph nodes have gradually increased in size, showing me that the cancerous cells are slowly taking over. Didn't stop him from running up the steep hill, jumping into the freezing pond, racing across the open meadow, crunching down the deer (I presume) skull, or attempting to launch me into parasailing as we trekked down the slope on leash.

Contemplating the possibility of Nicholai's "last trip" is both curse and gift. Curse, because in focusing on future loss, I choose fear and sadness. Gift, because when I look at his bright eyes and eager expression in the face of that loss, I choose to do what matters. I hike with my buddies, breathe, see, smell, feel, love. Play pirates with my eight-year-old, bake chocolate chip cookies, and snooze in the warm afternoon sun curled up with canines.

Maybe this is Nicholai's last trip to Montana, likely it is. And what a blessing, he was never supposed to make it this far.