The Free Radical

It was Deer who placed things back in the realm of the mundane when she explained that more than anything else it was my scent that was recognized all along my forest trail. I suppose it makes sense since I’ve discovered that juniper berries are a fairly strong diuretic… and they’ve caused me to leave my “scent” nearly everywhere.

My own sense of smell has dramatically improved too over the past few months. Sometimes now I smell an animal’s presence before I even see it. (My eyesight isn’t the greatest though.) Additionally, I can report that there has been a persistent and powerful smell of “New Earth” at various places along my route. Even on days when it appeared that we were stuck in deep winter, that freshly-dug sweet earthy smell belied the cold.

So that brings us to the latest adventure. It is a time for introducing my new puppy, Sitka, to the Forest.

She’s not quite up to making the whole trek, so we just skirted the eastern side of the territory. She’s very curious– a quality I appreciate in dogs as well as humans. It gave her the opportunity to introduce her own scent along the first outskirts. Hopefully the Forest will recognize us now as a team.

It is my hope that having Sitka along with me won’t negatively impact our animal encounters. I’ll do my best to teach her to be gentle and accepting… and I hope my no-fear stance rubs off on her.

Together we’ll try not to let the Forest Reports get too self-indulgent. This does seem to be the right time of year though for introducing a puppy into the mix. Wish us luck!