Lotar Meets Mountain

It was a mild day and so I decided to take the pups for a nice long outing. Since it was a weekday, I figured it would be a uncrowded time to show Lothar Fip’s Moun-tin.

Aus? -- It hasn’t taken Lothar long to learn DoxiDeutch.

Even though we haven’t found a home for Lothar yet, it is only a matter of time and so I took along my camera.

[click on photos to zoom]

Out the door, into the elevator, down to the ground floor and the doggies charged furiously to the front door, where they abruptly stopped and stood wagging their tails. How would they know where I was planning to go?

“No, no., doggies... truck!”

The “truck” word. Lothar has picked up on that too. It means speed, wind in the nostrils and ... who knows what doggie images they conjure up in their minds, but the memory of something fun for sure from the looks of it.

They charged back down the hallway and out to the parking area, where we all piled into the Ford.

Up to the moun-tin,
The moun-tin, the mou-ountin.
Up to the moun-tin
The moun-tin, tin!

The Mountin Song. Fips knew and Lothar could only guess that it must be something pretty good.

When we arrived, it was the perfect late afternoon -- sunny but not too hot and not too many people. The “mountin” regional park in the Oakland hills, now belongs to Fips but it was a new experience for Lothar. I took them on the long circuit, along the curvy south trail that snakes a long the crest and then, a mile on, onto the French trail which descends into the redwood canyon.

Along the ridge road, we met another fuzzy hiker (occasional, by the looks of it). Fips likes to sniff along the road, but Lothar was just bounding back and forth in a state approaching delirium.. He’d run up a ways, would stop look, and then run back to us before running forward again.

Lotar At French Trail Turnout

It makes perfect sense. He’s just a pupper and given the circumstances of his finding it is almost certainly the case that he’s never been to a place like this before. What must it be like for doggie eyes, ears and noses to be quickened with the this vast surrounding ambience of light, breeze, rustling, reflections, wafting smells and noises? We humans objectify too much; Lothar was just participating with his environment.

He got to the French Trail turn-off before we did, and I yelled for him to wait up. Then we turned left and down, on the narrow path through thick bushes, fallen tree trunks, and tall wild grass.

The French trail is great walk, especially for dachshunds. Except for one short, steep-ish spot, it slopes most of the way at a 15 degree incline which is not too difficult on the up-hike and is a a breezy trot on the hike-down. It undulates in a few spots and curves gently through the vegetation.

Like a river, it eventually disgorges at the bed of the canyon where the soil is moist, the air is damp and the light is always watery green. A creeklet runs off an adjacent ridge fills up shallow ponds here and there amidst the rocks, the ferns and the towering evergreens.

A little ways on, this grassy bed narrows again as it gets squeezed between two steep, rocky ridge formations. The creek runs through a narrow crevice as the path skirts along right as rises up the side of the ridge. It gets a little perilously narrow around here, and I keep my eyes fixed on the dogs, especially now since, in the late afternoon, the grove was darker than usual.



Past this narrows, the ridges open up again, at the star-like center of the grove where four ridges meet around a soft-earth arena carpeted with leaves and needles. Here, the creeklet breaks apart into scattered shallow rivulets along canyon bed. The path, after one last rise, makes a sharp turn to the left and the declines into the canyon floor at 30-40 degree angle.


Fips loves this spot, and tears on down like some sort of fuzzy bobsled. Lothar lopes along merrily. Without doubt, this is the meaning of fun.

We poke around at the bottom of the canyon, puddling through waters, slurping a drink and sniffing the humus (yes--- I inhale it too) before completing the circuit and heading back along a fire trail to the picnic area and then back up to the crest and parking lot where we all pile into the truck for a breezy ride back down Shepherds Canyon road to “the Oakland flats,” the Lake and home where the fuzzy ones, big and small, konk out.

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