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Further Confusion, and California	[Jan. 26th, 2011|09:44 pm]Footpad
[Tags**|california, friends, further confusion, malamutes, travel] [Current Mood**	wistful]It's hard to write much about Further Confusion. What happened? Nothing of vast consequence. How was it? Bewildering. What did I get up to? Only a few special things—except for finding, and meeting, and hugging, and snuggling up to, endless people whom I've met and liked in my travels, or talked to online, or loved for years and frequently missed. How can I count them all? How can I begin to recount the time of gifts that comes with rebuilding my ties with so many wonderful people? It truly did my heart good.I shared a hotel room with elfasi, who was a lovely room-mate, a nice person to wander around with on occasion, and a rock of stability after certain deeply bewildering occurrences (see blog entries passim). Thank you for everything, leopard, including all the wonderful people you got me out to meet even when I was feeling torpid.Sadly, I was laid up in my room for a good day and a half of the con, feeling listless and enervated with a mild belly-ick that I suspect I picked up in a nearby Indian restaurant. So I didn't get to various room-parties and dances that I would probably have vastly enjoyed. So it goes.Before and after the con, I stayed rather quietly with a few close friends, not getting out very much except to go and eat, or to take a slightly-crazed German shepherd for rambles in the country. But for the last few nights, I went and stayed with raikawolf, kiyote and (most importantly, of course) the magnificent malamute Kuma at their home way down in the redwoods. For some reason I spent an extraordinary amount of the time falling asleep, but in between I got fed, and taken for restrained walks in the woods and on the beach, and one morning we went on a zipline tour of the redwood canopy. Amazing stuff.Here's a poor phone-camera video of Kuma being utterly magnificent on the shores of the Pacific:The three of us walked for hours along the shore, padding in the sand, picking our way over wave-worn rocks, poking at sea anemones, philosophising idly, encountering mussel-pickers with sociable dogs, recharging our spirits in the crystal-clear weather. I wanted to go swimming in the ocean, but then we noticed that there was a monstrous rip-tide running, and self-preservation prevailed. Instead we went home, and Kuma and I fell asleep some more.It was a very, very therapeutic holiday.
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California, a lake, and peace in the calm of the evening	[Jan. 13th, 2011|02:48 am]Footpad
[**Tags**|california, travel]I'm very fond of California.I've just gotten back from an hour's walk in the hills south of San Jose. It wasn't all that easy to pay attention to my surroundings, as I was being dragged along on the leash by a borderline manic German shepherd, but it was sweet to be out of the city and into the company of green and growing things and the gentle rush of a stream nearby.I've been in California for, what?—four days now? It feels like both more and less. I've mostly spent the time holed up at a friend's place, eating too much and sleeping on an odd schedule, but I seem to be over the jet-lag now, and also over an ill-timed outbreak of reclusiveness. sabertail was nice enough to put me up for an evening and to accommodate my desires to go for rambling walks, not eat anything, and lose consciousness at the wrong time of day. But now it's Wednesday; Further Confusion begins tomorrow, and I am ready to _par-tay._But before the riot begins, this hour spent walking with a dog who alternates between heaving at the leash and pathetically whining for no obvious reason. The earth smells different in California, the vegetation smells unfamiliar and sweet, the bird-calls are strange and the cast of the light is like nowhere I know in Europe. So I bundle the dog into our borrowed car and, before we return to the city, I gaze out across the glittering light on the reservoir, and think...... I think nothing. A brief moment of unquestioned peace, of the kind that's very good to carry in your heart once in a while.
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Everything starts somewhere	[May. 20th, 2010|07:57 pm]Footpad
[Tags**|california, dogs, kuma, malamutes, mischa, photos] [Current Mood**	loving]Here's a photo that brings back memories. I don't remember how I got it, but I know where and roughly when it was. I was staying with raikawolf in California, probably in 2007, and I made the acquaintance of this malamute pup. Look at the paws on him—he may be as big as Mischa in that photo but he's still got plenty of growing to doRaika, of course, is responsible for feeding the incomparable Kuma, and it was my visits to them over earlier years that edged me ever closer to accepting the One True Faith of Malamute. Behold
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Wolfdogs	[Oct. 8th, 2008|05:13 pm]Footpad
[Tags**|california, happy, travel, wolfdogs, wolves] [Current Mood**	wistfully serene]A wolf stole my breakfast this morning. He was just being a wolf, and I'd foolishly turned my back on my toast and butter for a few moments. There was a clatter of plate and knife on the floor and a scrabbling of surprised paws, but when I looked over my shoulder I saw the undaunted wolf sneaking back in to grab my butter.I sighed, shook my head, fished the remaining toast off the floor and ate it. Such is life with wolves.Today is my last day in California but I spend it travelling, so it doesn't really count. Yesterday was my real last day in CaliforniaOh what a perfect day.keikan had again been kind enough to house a wolf overnight, despite the risk of getting growled at and having his sofa peed on. So early in the day I bid him farewell (*nuzzle*) and headed south in a rented car, travelling of my own accord, with that little edge of alertness that makes travel worthwhile. And in time I came to a little house half-hidden under redwoods in the shadow of a gorge, and that was where timberwolf4u lives with Dire and ten grizzled-grey creatures who promptly set up a spine-chilling howl that resonated through the valley. This was the wolfdog sanctuary.They had another guest for the day, a slim and pretty woman, with a flighty, elusive and faintly uncanny charm whose character eluded me until it occurred to me how much she was like a wolf-dog herself. I hope I managed not to gawk at her too much. Presently we all trooped up to the wolfdog enclosures, sat down on strewn straw and got circled, inspected, investigated, sniffed, pawed at, rubbed against and eventually more or less accepted by the pack. Then we sat there awhile, petting wolfdogs and getting our faces slobbered on, while they continued their pack politics around us.In another enclosure, with a female called Gertie and a six-month-old wolf called Elko, I wriggled into the tranquil cool of a wolf den and lay there awhile in darkness, drowsily feeling like a wolf myself. Then we went up the steep side of the gorge and explored awhile on the higher slopes, climbing on old redwood stumps, grubbing in the leaf-litter for little things that crawl and wriggle. Returning, we fished for crawfish in the stream that rippled and pooled over smooth rounded rocks in the cool, tree-green light of the valley bottom. Crawfish are gluttons for raw chicken: toss in a lump on a string, and they'll glom onto it until you draw them right up into a net. Though it was getting too late for them to be really greedy, after much splashing and stalking we returned with nearly fifty skittering clawed beasts who ended their lives in boiling water and garlic butter, to be cracked open and devoured by the ravening pack. Then Dire's mashed potatoes (with sour cream and nutmeg, mmm) and locally-made sausages, and I sank into a languid food-coma that gradually segued into a dreamless ten hours' sleep.Indeed a perfect day.Now I'm sitting in San Francisco airport and wishin' I was gone, goin' home. Tell Mischa I'm on my way.
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(no subject)	[Apr. 28th, 2007|08:40 pm]Footpad
[**Tags**|california, food, travel, walkies]"Ladies and gentlemen. Good afternoon, and welcome aboard Alaska Airways flight 359 to Seattle Tacoma. May I invite you to take a good look outside at the gorgeous hot sunny weather. And say goodbye to it, because the weather in Seattle is heavily clouded, forty-three degrees Fahrenheit [7°C]. Typical Seattle weather."And up we went, and I looked out over San Francisco Bay and wistfully bid California farewell.I spent two of my last few days with keikan. He was convalescent and I was still feeling liverish after my mild food-poisoning, so we didn't do much but lounge around and read and go for small walks and cinema trips. (Hot Fuzz, eight out of ten, go see if you have any love of farce or spoof or British comedy.) From there, for a final evening with Lyon and Cinnamon. We cooked a chicken stew, cuddled Nik the ineffably sweet-tempered German shepherd dog, and drank altogether too much wine. My last night in California was spent catching up with jaffa_tamarin, whom I hadn't seen since we met at felder's all those years ago. I also had the unanticipated pleasure of meeting his cute and affable mate krahnos.Jaffa took me out to the fourth and last national park of my trip, the little Alum Rock Park: steep valley sides, thick brushy woodland giving way to chaparral and grass on the higher slopes. Jaffa, being a keen wildlife photographer (see his dailyanimals), spotted all sorts of critters that would otherwise have completely escaped my notice. "Look, a hummingbird." "Where?" I asked, trying to follow the line of his pointing finger. Eventually I found the little scrap of feathers, pretending to be the tip of a dead branch. "Look, a squirrel," sitting in the leaf-litter, staring at us. "Look, a lizard," lying on the path in a state of near-suicidal apathy.The afternoon weather was hot and dry, and by the time we got home I was happy to relax into the coolness of Jaffa's house.He and I and Krahnos went out for supper at a restaurant which was full of policemen, raising money for some charitable cause by acting as waiters to the slightly-incredulous clientele. I had jambalaya, and struggled to eat it all. But now I've got to scoot because tkat is taking me to El Gaucho. *wag*
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A thousand shades of green and grey	[Apr. 18th, 2007|05:39 pm]Footpad
[Tags**|california, dogs, holiday, life, travel] [Current Mood**	tranquil]In the past I've always been to California in the beginning of summer, when the heat and drought are beginning to sear the hills and turn everything to shades of dun. Now I arrived in mid-April and it was still spring, just, sort of: for the first time I got to see the hills when they're green.For the first couple of days California greeted me with perfect spring weather, bright and cool and cloudless, until on Saturday a weather front moved in and the clouds gathered and darkened with rain. "English weather," I said happily, and raikawolf took me and yotie for a long walk in the Sunol Regional Wilderness.Sunol is steep, hilly: forested hillsides with lush high meadows, weathered rocky outcrops, and rivers running over beds of rounded stones. dogcandy came with us, bringing a malamute puppy and his beautiful husky-mix Mackenzie. So our tally of dogs was three, with enough bounce and zest for any normal pack of six. Kuma had a wonderful time, especially since he'd conceived a robust affection for Mackenzie and a couple of times had to be dissuaded from trying to ravish her. Apart from Kuma's loutish moments, it was wonderful to watch the three of them dashing in company through the rain-laden grass. Pack, I thought, and smiled, and ran after them, leaving the rest of the humans behind.Up on the grassy hill-tops, the wind was chill and the deep-grey clouds scudded by, gravid with rain. From time to time, watery sunlight broke through and glittered on the waters and the meadows while waves of wind swept through the grass. In my time I've padded around some bits of the world, but I've seen few places more beautiful than Californian hills in the rain.÷All the way up, there was talk of the Angry Cows and their beastly behaviour towards passing dog-walkers. We met them on the way down, but they must have been in a tranquil mood because they showed, at most, a gentle bovine curiosity, barely enough to distract them from the continual mental effort of chewing their laden cud. We washed the worst of the mud off our feet, climbed in our respective cars, and went home to find food.In the evening a bunch of friends came round to visit, but I was assailed by a strange lassitude and curled up on an airbed in the office, soon to sink into a deep and dreamless slumber. And keikan picked me up the next morning, but that's another day's story.
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