Home Again
It is good to get out of the woods now and then. Even Huck would agree.
If you have four long, skinny legs and are only two years old, running as fast as you can is the most fun thing to do. We are just back from a week-long visit to Louisville, Kentucky, to visit our son and offer a stream of advice setting up his new apartment, during which time Huckleberry was restricted to leash walks around the city and its river parks. No running.
For people, downtown Louisville is a dog-walking paradise of greenscapes and pathways. For a dog, it is a melting pot of smells, discarded food crumbs, and passing pedestrians that enrich life as much as a trip to the museum. It is also thick with unsuspecting squirrels, accustomed to restrained dogs, at which to lunge with giddy delight and watch scramble. “City squirrels,” Huck’s eyes sparkled, looking back from the taut end of his rope. “Love ‘em.”
Despite these sidebars of experience, on his first outing after returning home, Huckleberry shot from the truck down the trail like any animal from a cage—zero to free in less than a second, bounding into the snowy woods, running zigzags, jumping, twisting, kicking like a horse. Not a squirrel in sight because they saw us coming. (Country squirrels.) He offered a piece of performance art called “Back Home,” a redeeming work to compensate for earlier toy-shredding, slipper-chewing, pillow-destroying performances.
We are happy to be home, also a bit forlorn as one is after visiting children, or as we were after visiting parents back in the day. A tad homesick. One child in Louisville, another now in Paris, another in Philadelphia. Dispersed points of light glowing in the distance. But we are glad to be home. We said so a few times last night. Glad to be home. And this morning, Huck’s energetic performance asked, how glad? This glad, his feet on the passenger door armrest, nose pushing into the cracked window opening? This glad, by then, squeezing between me and the steering wheel of the truck in anticipation of a fast exit? What about THIS GLAD, out the door, at full speed down the trail without so much as a ready, set, go?
It is good to get out of the woods now and then. Even Huck would agree. We ate delicious Cuban food one night in a raucous Cuban restaurant where musicians bang drums at tableside if it is your birthday. We sampled a smorgasbord of cured meats at a restaurant fittingly called Cured. We had fried chicken. It being Louisville, we drank bourbon, some of it distilled and bottled across the street from where we stayed. I enjoy bourbon. It occurs to me that I do not know where else one can go, except wine country, to experience a wall of one type of beverage—a wall of bourbons, end to end, floor to ceiling, sometimes wrapping to a second wall. I can only compare it to waiting for my wife while she hunts for the right pair of black flats in a shoe superstore. It is immersive. A deep dive. We emerged with a couple of specialty brands to keep us warm through the winter.
On the way home, we spent New Year’s Eve in Buffalo, New York. I used to live in Buffalo. The city has recovered from its rustbelt days and, despite a steady rain, was humming for the holiday. We were not quite as humming, in bed by nine after nine hours on the road and an early, celebratory dinner. But we were up at midnight for the fireworks that erupted in the square next door and boomed for fifteen minutes or so. It was very special to experience a live fireworks display from bed.
I forget how many radio stations there are in the world. At home, depending on the weather, I can hit the scan button on our receiver, and it will do laps up and down the dial looking for a signal. Headed to Louisville, I thought it would be nice to steep myself in a little Buffalo Bills talk radio. No idea how many miles we drove before chasing one down—it felt like nearly Erie, Pennsylvania—but at some point, after pausing ten seconds at 90.3, then 90.4, followed by 90.5, I suggested to my co-pilot that we needed to hurry the process up or we would be listening to Cleveland Brown’s talk radio.
At present, in my space over the garage, writing you this postcard, the only sound the airwaves are making is the rustle of branches. And Huckleberry, after his run, is asleep on the couch, his head on a pillow, soaking up late afternoon sunshine coming through the window. Light snow is blowing. My timing is such that I think a bourbon will be in order when this is finished and recorded. I will associate that bourbon with the comforts of our wood stove and the snow and early sunset. The dog, as well, who will be curled up on the floor somewhere after we step across to the cabin. It equals home in the winter.
People in Louisville will need to come here to discover what that is about.