but can dogs fly?

Written last night:

I love to walk on Sundays; nobody much is around. You feel you own the town. It’s a good time to get to know a new city. I’m beginning to feel like my old self — able to explore on foot without pain. Also, I wanted to tire Zing out. It’s been a long time since we had those 4-mile runs in the woods. I think I succeeded -- Zing is fast asleep on a pillow next to mine. 

We got up at 6. As the sun was rising we walked down to the Capitol. No one was there. 

When we got home I made myself a hearty Sunday breakfast — potatoes and green onions and bacon and an egg. I’ve been eating kind of light, but not on Sundays!

I spent an hour or more reading the Times, or most of it, and then I took Zing out again for a long jaunt. (It was going to be short, but one thing led to the next.) We ended up crossing the Sacramento River on what I’ve been calling “the yellow bridge.” Up close it really is golden. Everything here is golden. Yellow with a shine. Then we went along the River Walk, which I’ve been told is lovely and also a good place to encounter homeless people. Yes, the first person I saw was asleep on the cement, with a backpack nearby and a grocery cart not far away. I wanted to walk where he was, because it led under the bridge, but decided against it. Yet, Sunday felt perfectly safe, and it was.

Not knowing what we’d find, Zing and I strolled the bank of the river, taking the low path close to the water. It's not the grasses and wide fields of our walks back at Phipps Park in Tallahassee. Rivers are so — narrow! This was the closest we’ve gotten to open country, a little broader in feel than Paradise Beach along the American River. It’s odd to feel constrained by Nature herself. (No offense, Mother Nature!) 

We encountered families and joggers, and eventually a food truck festival (“Off the Grid”), with chairs and even shady tents, free for anyone to use, overlooking the river. My friend Mona called, and I sat there in the shade facing the river, talking to her. On our way home Zing and I took a detour to what is called “Old Sac,” or “Old Town.” It’s a busy and fun clutch of restaurants and an old train and other links to the past — it seems a popular Sunday family spot. As we left, a woman approached me for directions. Luckily, her question was simple.

I determinedly don’t do much on Sunday, so I spent the rest of the afternoon puttering in my studio and putting books on the shelves in the big white living room. 

Time for another walk! (I did this one more for myself than to tire Zing out.) 

And who should we meet in front of our building but the dog who jumped off the 15th floor balcony and lived to tell about it. Clark and I heard the story when the realtor explained the reason for the mesh between our balcony railings. She told us that a couple of years ago a dog had slipped through and — unbelievably — landed in the hot tub. I believed her at first, but then we told a skeptical Patrick and Steph, and began ourselves to think the story a fiction, an urban legend. But no — this afternoon Zing was nuzzling up to a black dog on the sidewalk. His owner, Kyle, and I began to talk. The dog is blind, Kyle said, with cataracts.  Just before Christmas a couple of years ago, Sam (the dog) and Kyle were on their 15th floor balcony, and in a split-second when Kyle wasn’t looking, Sam slipped through an opening to the neighbor’s balcony and then pushed through the railings and fell, landing (one supposes) with a splash in the community hot tub, swam a couple laps around it, and then got out and collapsed, with several broken ribs. A neighbor on the eighth floor had seen him fly past the window. The neighbor rushed downstairs. Kyle did too. Sam survived, got interviewed by TV and newspaper and now walks around, a celebrity dog, a real-life urban legend.

So an uneventful Sunday was amazing after all.

Love,

k

Sam, the dog who flew

Zing