Fips Explores the Earth

August is Europe’s vaction month and Michael’s friend, Harald-from-Norway has come to visit. We spent the week preceding, shampooing the carpet and putting runners down in the much trafficked hallways.

Michael got it into his head to show Canyon -- a communal collection of counter culture cabins on the other side of the Berkeley-Oakland Hills -- to Harald. “Oh, c’mon lets go and take a walk in the hills above your cabin,” he said, referring to the shack I had rented a couple of years before.

“Fips hasn’t had all of his shots,” I said. Michael thought about it and, not surprisingly, convinced himself that this was not an impediment to his plan. It can’t be any worse than whatever he’s exposed to around the lake here, and anyways....”

And so -- Harald holding Fips on his lap and Michael squeezed into the jump seat --- we piled into my truck and headed across the Bay. It was noon by the time we got there. We parked in the moist and shady redwood groves down by the Post Office and then headed to the ridge summit up a bumpy, cracked semblance of roadway that wound its way past “mothballed” cars and assorted dwellings in various states of repair and disrepair.

It was cool and two shaggy dogs came loping down the road to say hello and sniff up Fips, who didn’t get much of a chance to return the interest on account of his size and the fact that the other dogs just as happily loped off. We continued on; and, as we ascended into the sunlight, it became warmer. By the time we reached the summit, Harald had taken off his shirt. But the li'l puppy kept up the pace.

Although Fips was hanging tongue, he didn’t appear tired at all. He liked being with the pack and interested himself in sniffing mud tracks and under bushes. Aside from the environs around Lake Merritt, this was Fips’ first real smell of the world.

After making it to the summit and sniffing around its cluster of trees and carpet of leaves and dried acorns, Fips and party headed back down. By now the pup was getting a little tuckered -- he's barely past newborn after all -- but the increasing shade as we descended to the grove, reinvigorated him. Back in the truck, he zonked out.

A day or two later, Harald said he wanted to see the coast. I had work to do, and so Michael, Harald and the Fipster headed up to Drake’s Beach.

According to Michael, Fips was at first uncertain about the feel of the sand but soon got the got the hang of soft-padding and scampered about, the salt air (new smell!) filling his nostrils. He was not interested in the surf which seemed to intimidate him. But.....ooooh.... what’s this smell under the sand....?

Fips is part terrier - an earthdog. Does he look up with wonder at rolling hills or out with awe at the vast undulating sea? What were Fips' first impression of this Earth we live on? I can't say for sure except that the wide wide world we see is but cousin to the one he smells.

.