Someday, I’d love to write a story about the Hound Of The Meadow. Maybe tonight a little bit.
She prowls the meadows and the moors, far from the road, out of sight of people.
She shares the meadow with a bear, some raccoons, coyotes and foxes, mice and chipmunks, there are rumors of moose in the winter, down from the North. There are birds and bats, eagles and hawks, rats and bees, snakes and lizards, frogs and toads, marsh and dry grass, valleys and gentle hills, birch and pine and maple trees, brush and wildflowers.
She hides in the meadow grass, pouncing on unsuspecting chipmunks, never catching them or chasing them far. She is a magician, she can disappear at will, then reappear, she hops and bounces and dives, she is here, then there, she floats through the barbed wire fences, slipping between the wires, under them, or over them. She never gets caught.
Maybe she befriends a fox out there, or falls in love with a coyote, or has strange and secret adventures with a bear, or is invited into the chipmunk’s hollow to dance and drink and sing. Maybe she saves a mouse from a feral cat, or carries a butterfly on her back. Maybe she buries her treasures in a soft hole in the wet grass, or perhaps she finds a treasure and shares it with her secret friends.
Does she remember her other life in there, or does it slip out of sight and mind for a bit, living the life of a dog. Maybe she has a boy friend out there, a stray dog, even a coyote, perhaps they chase one another and even make love out in the deep grass out of sight. Or hunt a mouse together.
Perhaps she burrows into the dens of other animals, or digs her own holes. She swims in the wet marshes of the meadow, drinks from the cool and hidden streams, the smells and droppings tell her a million stories beyond the consciousness and understanding of human beings. She wants to hear them all.
She is beyond the rules of people, she runs unleashed, she goes where she wants to go, rolls in what she loves to roll in and smell, chase what she wants to chase, sails freely through the air, as if she could fly.
And then, when she hears the footsteps on the road that she listens for, she appears as if by magic, out of the brush, over a fence, and onto the road. Her secret life in the meadow behind her, for now.
We will never know. She has created her own world, it exists for her alone. There are no rules in the meadow, no prying humans with their rules. In the meadow a good dog is a dog that lives like a dog, the bad dogs are the ones who have to live like human people.
The Dog Of The Meadow comes when she wants and goes when she wishes. One day, she may vanish in there and stay, joining the secret ranks of the mystical dogs. Hounds Of The Meadow can do that sometimes.