Walking the Pumpkin

When the Pumpkin comes for his annual winter visit, we go walking. Every day, usually in the afternoon (because it's too dark early in the morning when our friends Roger and Kona walk) and always for at least an hour never mind the weather.

That's pretty much essential for his health and well-being, but it doesn't hurt me a bit either, and I like the fact that while the schedule is intense while it lasts, there's always an end.

Usually just before the ski-season starts!

We almost always walk on the network of informal trails and old logging roads behind the airport, the area on and around the Erickson Main between the Jubilee Parkway and the Duncan Bay Main. It's not the most scenic country around, in that it's pretty-much all been logged – a lot of it very recently and much of it not very sensitively – but it's close, and walking there allows dogs to go off-leash without much chance that they'll meet overly-sensitive walkers or bike-riders, or overly-protective dog owners.

You will meet dirt bikes and quads, however, as well as the occasional 4X4. And, of course, other dogs, often delightful but occasionally not very well-trained and, very occasionally, aggressive.

You walk your dog; you take your chances.

Erickson Main

One of the thing's we've spotted quite regularly this winter is a pickup truck, accompanied by two dogs, off-leash. The driver of the truck appears to be a young guy, and happily the dogs respond instantly to his voice, because the first time we met they started to give Pumpkin a hard time before he called them off.

But here's the thing: in order to get your truck onto the Erickson Main you have to go through the ditch, over the dike built especially to keep you out, around the gate and the sign that informs you you're trespassing if you don't have express permission to be there, then along the quad trail to the Main, which is just an unmaintained, disused logging road. Once is probably all the thrill you're going to get.

So it's clearly not about the driving; it's about the exercise the dogs get.

And if you're smart enough to know that exercise is good for your dogs, why aren't you smart enough to know it would probably be good for you too?

This year so far we haven't seen the resident bear, although we've seen his tracks a few times. We have seen (much to Pumpkin's ineffectual delight) numbers of rabbits, several grouse, a few deer, and a herd of elk.

Pumpkin sees elk across the clearcut

I've found a driver's license, a bank debit card, and $2.10 in coins, all at different times on different trails.

I've also taken a number of photos which please me.

Still 18 days left in which to see that bear!