Heartbreaking, Crap in Paradise
by Kathleen Meyer
early July 2012
early July 2012
Summer’s first dip in the river.
With the thermometer steaming at 98°F and spring’s gush of snow-melt having settled into a lazy flow, a friend and I head to our swimming hole of the past two years, the one left by the high, gouging run-off of 2010. We find the fishing access overflowing with parked cars, trucks, and raft trailers. Not a good sign for a Monday. But we know that the sandy banks by the bridge can be Coney Island-cluttered, rows of tanning bodies sprawled on Day-Glo beach towels, tilted umbrellas, beer coolers, boom boxes, and bevies of splashing kids—but by the time we complete a half-mile stroll through riparian woodland, our favorite beach will be private, peaceful, and delicious.
Straightaway, we take to the beaten path. Not ten feet in, dead center in the trail, we’re greeted by dog shit—a fresh pile, and I mean pile, three looping layers, two flies already. (With excrement my enduring subject, I’ve learned that flies can locate a new issuance in twenty seconds.) Thirty paces farther along, by trail’s edge, two more deposits appear—older, drier, half-squished. Well, YUK! I want to go home. Nooo, I can do this. It means a swim. And surely, we’re beyond the worst of it. Don’t dogs leap from a vehicle, immediately tuck their hind feet beneath them, hump up, and crap? The path will surely get better ahead. After the first meadow, we fork to the right and enter the filtered shade of pines and willows. Knee-high wildflowers abound—daises, St. Johnswort, and yellow clover, or bee plant. To someone else, this vegetation might be as sacred as medicinal herbs or as dastardly as weeds, but, in this moment, to me, it’s a heaven-sent visual, eliciting sighs. Look! Look!
Next we descend to an old cobblestone dry wash, dotted with new vegetation, and come abreast of a saucy stand of tansy, a long way from blooming; its yellow button blooms will delight in August. From it’s center waves a lone stalk of grass with an orchard-type seed head. The stalk, I stop to admire, examine, and coo over—it’s seven feet tall! I take a mental picture, with plans to look it up when I get home. We’ve encountered also, so far, a young Black Lab bounding toward us, until a voice from the left fork calls to it, plus a man and woman on the way out with a leashed pair of Shepherd-sized crossbreeds. Another two loose dogs are crawling up our back trail, but their owners must have turn off toward the inland pond because soon we lose them all.
We climb through the last of the cobbles, occasional old chunks of desiccated dog doo littering the way. Shortly, the path splits again, three choices. Good God, did canine anxiety of indecision cause this evacuation? Smack in the sandy forks sits another impressive heap, maybe as old as an hour. The specimen fairly bubbles under the blazing sun, its stench permeating the cosmos. Again we angle right, this time to catch our route along the sheer bank, where I’ve often stared down at large fish sleeping in a deep trough. But the path ends. In space. The bank and our old track has washed downriver, taking with it a dozen trees. Now the current slides across a wide pebbly slope, churning out new water music. There’s nothing for it but to backtrack and bushwhack through the tall grasses, trees, and tangles of deadfall. A strong ambient stink of dog shit lashes my senses. I’ve ceased to enjoy the scenery. My eyes stay peeled, scouting ahead for each plant of my foot, for fear of a misstep. Just beyond the location of last year’s bald-faced hornet’s nest, which also seems to be gone, we reach our destination only to discover that the beach, too, has vanished and the swimming hole become a series of rolling gravel bars. Dropping towels, hats, sarong, mini dress, and water bottles on a strip of packed mud, we stretch out in the shallow water between bars for an hour, and I catch up on my friend’s winter in Baja. While we visit, we’re aware of seven more dogs jogging by. A twosome of Newfies sporting dreadlocks are turned loose in the water nearby, and this new odor launches my friend into a tale of “The only thing worse-smelling than a wet dog is a wet chicken,” and I lie back, let the cool water lap my earlobes, happy to be regaled by her long-ago trials at chicken farming. It’s eventually a bank of black clouds sailing out of the mountains that drives us to packing up and picking our way back through the malodorous landscape.
Mother Nature’s changing nature, I easily forgive. Next time, my friend and I will arrive earlier and explore farther downriver for a new hole more divine than ever. The human destruction, however, is unbearable; it feels thoughtless, selfish, and wholly unnecessary. Mishandled feces rocket my ire . . . almost forty years of it, since I first began rowing rivers and landing on banks trashed with diapers, soiled toilet paper, and hastily hidden excrement. I’m thinking now Does our species never evolve in this department? If it’s not our own shit, it’s our dogs’? By morning, I’m bent on making a sign:
With the thermometer steaming at 98°F and spring’s gush of snow-melt having settled into a lazy flow, a friend and I head to our swimming hole of the past two years, the one left by the high, gouging run-off of 2010. We find the fishing access overflowing with parked cars, trucks, and raft trailers. Not a good sign for a Monday. But we know that the sandy banks by the bridge can be Coney Island-cluttered, rows of tanning bodies sprawled on Day-Glo beach towels, tilted umbrellas, beer coolers, boom boxes, and bevies of splashing kids—but by the time we complete a half-mile stroll through riparian woodland, our favorite beach will be private, peaceful, and delicious.
Straightaway, we take to the beaten path. Not ten feet in, dead center in the trail, we’re greeted by dog shit—a fresh pile, and I mean pile, three looping layers, two flies already. (With excrement my enduring subject, I’ve learned that flies can locate a new issuance in twenty seconds.) Thirty paces farther along, by trail’s edge, two more deposits appear—older, drier, half-squished. Well, YUK! I want to go home. Nooo, I can do this. It means a swim. And surely, we’re beyond the worst of it. Don’t dogs leap from a vehicle, immediately tuck their hind feet beneath them, hump up, and crap? The path will surely get better ahead. After the first meadow, we fork to the right and enter the filtered shade of pines and willows. Knee-high wildflowers abound—daises, St. Johnswort, and yellow clover, or bee plant. To someone else, this vegetation might be as sacred as medicinal herbs or as dastardly as weeds, but, in this moment, to me, it’s a heaven-sent visual, eliciting sighs. Look! Look!
Next we descend to an old cobblestone dry wash, dotted with new vegetation, and come abreast of a saucy stand of tansy, a long way from blooming; its yellow button blooms will delight in August. From it’s center waves a lone stalk of grass with an orchard-type seed head. The stalk, I stop to admire, examine, and coo over—it’s seven feet tall! I take a mental picture, with plans to look it up when I get home. We’ve encountered also, so far, a young Black Lab bounding toward us, until a voice from the left fork calls to it, plus a man and woman on the way out with a leashed pair of Shepherd-sized crossbreeds. Another two loose dogs are crawling up our back trail, but their owners must have turn off toward the inland pond because soon we lose them all.
We climb through the last of the cobbles, occasional old chunks of desiccated dog doo littering the way. Shortly, the path splits again, three choices. Good God, did canine anxiety of indecision cause this evacuation? Smack in the sandy forks sits another impressive heap, maybe as old as an hour. The specimen fairly bubbles under the blazing sun, its stench permeating the cosmos. Again we angle right, this time to catch our route along the sheer bank, where I’ve often stared down at large fish sleeping in a deep trough. But the path ends. In space. The bank and our old track has washed downriver, taking with it a dozen trees. Now the current slides across a wide pebbly slope, churning out new water music. There’s nothing for it but to backtrack and bushwhack through the tall grasses, trees, and tangles of deadfall. A strong ambient stink of dog shit lashes my senses. I’ve ceased to enjoy the scenery. My eyes stay peeled, scouting ahead for each plant of my foot, for fear of a misstep. Just beyond the location of last year’s bald-faced hornet’s nest, which also seems to be gone, we reach our destination only to discover that the beach, too, has vanished and the swimming hole become a series of rolling gravel bars. Dropping towels, hats, sarong, mini dress, and water bottles on a strip of packed mud, we stretch out in the shallow water between bars for an hour, and I catch up on my friend’s winter in Baja. While we visit, we’re aware of seven more dogs jogging by. A twosome of Newfies sporting dreadlocks are turned loose in the water nearby, and this new odor launches my friend into a tale of “The only thing worse-smelling than a wet dog is a wet chicken,” and I lie back, let the cool water lap my earlobes, happy to be regaled by her long-ago trials at chicken farming. It’s eventually a bank of black clouds sailing out of the mountains that drives us to packing up and picking our way back through the malodorous landscape.
Mother Nature’s changing nature, I easily forgive. Next time, my friend and I will arrive earlier and explore farther downriver for a new hole more divine than ever. The human destruction, however, is unbearable; it feels thoughtless, selfish, and wholly unnecessary. Mishandled feces rocket my ire . . . almost forty years of it, since I first began rowing rivers and landing on banks trashed with diapers, soiled toilet paper, and hastily hidden excrement. I’m thinking now Does our species never evolve in this department? If it’s not our own shit, it’s our dogs’? By morning, I’m bent on making a sign:
By noon, I’ve rethought it all, toned it down (actually slapped it way back from what you’re seeing here). I have designs on establishing a garbage can, a supply of plastic bags, a message with pleasant, helpful, inspiring instructions . . . like the walking paths in the city of Missoula. Two questions remain: Just whom should I lobby to fund it—Fish, Wildlife, and Parks? And to tend it? A local scout troop?
Then, in 2018, I discovered what was missing in my humor that day—HUMOR!
Then, in 2018, I discovered what was missing in my humor that day—HUMOR!
Now this one is considerably BETTER!!! (Found six years later, June, 2018, on dogtime.com)
And I rather liked this one! (Found also June, 2018, on dogpoopsigns.com, but it’s 24 bucks)
Three days pass and the full-on foul smell lingers, if not up my nose, then at the front of my mind. Yet my usual get-up-and-go has, in mid-July’s heat, drooped like a tired balloon. Exhaustion rules. I’ve grass to mow, two marmots to trap before they nip off the rest of my porch plants, a barn to clean, a book to research, a blog to write, and now—in between it all—tears to shed: where will I swim?
Dogs-Running-Free-with-the-Wind is one symbol of Big Sky freedom that’s bunk. What’s acceptable in the wide-open of sheep or cattle ranchs is not OK on highly adored river paths.
Dogs-Running-Free-with-the-Wind is one symbol of Big Sky freedom that’s bunk. What’s acceptable in the wide-open of sheep or cattle ranchs is not OK on highly adored river paths.
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Heartbreaking, Crap in Paradise
by Kathleen Meyer
early July 2012
early July 2012
Summer’s first dip in the river.
With the thermometer steaming at 98°F and spring’s gush of snow-melt having settled into a lazy flow, a friend and I head to our swimming hole of the past two years, the one left by the high, gouging run-off of 2010. We find the fishing access overflowing with parked cars, trucks, and raft trailers. Not a good sign for a Monday. But we know that the sandy banks by the bridge can be Coney Island-cluttered, rows of tanning bodies sprawled on Day-Glo beach towels, tilted umbrellas, beer coolers, boom boxes, and bevies of splashing kids—but by the time we complete a half-mile stroll through riparian woodland, our favorite beach will be private, peaceful, and delicious.
Straightaway, we take to the beaten path. Not ten feet in, dead center in the trail, we’re greeted by dog shit—a fresh pile, and I mean pile, three looping layers, two flies already. (With excrement my enduring subject, I’ve learned that flies can locate a new issuance in twenty seconds.) Thirty paces farther along, by trail’s edge, two more deposits appear—older, drier, half-squished. Well, YUK! I want to go home. Nooo, I can do this. It means a swim. And surely, we’re beyond the worst of it. Don’t dogs leap from a vehicle, immediately tuck their hind feet beneath them, hump up, and crap? The path will surely get better ahead. After the first meadow, we fork to the right and enter the filtered shade of pines and willows. Knee-high wildflowers abound—daises, St. Johnswort, and yellow clover, or bee plant. To someone else, this vegetation might be as sacred as medicinal herbs or as dastardly as weeds, but, in this moment, to me, it’s a heaven-sent visual, eliciting sighs. Look! Look!
Next we descend to an old cobblestone dry wash, dotted with new vegetation, and come abreast of a saucy stand of tansy, a long way from blooming; its yellow button blooms will delight in August. From it’s center waves a lone stalk of grass with an orchard-type seed head. The stalk, I stop to admire, examine, and coo over—it’s seven feet tall! I take a mental picture, with plans to look it up when I get home. We’ve encountered also, so far, a young Black Lab bounding toward us, until a voice from the left fork calls to it, plus a man and woman on the way out with a leashed pair of Shepherd-sized crossbreeds. Another two loose dogs are crawling up our back trail, but their owners must have turned off toward the inland pond because soon we lose them all.
We climb through the last of the cobbles, occasional old chunks of desiccated dog doo littering the way. Shortly, the path splits again, three choices. Good God, did canine anxiety of indecision cause this evacuation? Smack in the sandy forks sits another impressive heap, maybe as old as an hour. The specimen fairly bubbles under the blazing sun, its stench permeating the cosmos. Again we angle right, this time to catch our route along the sheer bank, where I’ve often stared down at large fish sleeping in a deep trough. But the path ends. In space. The bank and our old track has washed downriver, taking with it a dozen trees. Now the current slides across a wide pebbly slope, churning out new water music. There’s nothing for it but to backtrack and bushwhack through the tall grasses, trees, and tangles of deadfall. A strong ambient stink of dog shit lashes my senses. I’ve ceased to enjoy the scenery. My eyes stay peeled, scouting ahead for each plant of my foot, for fear of a misstep. Just beyond the location of last year’s bald-faced hornet’s nest, which also seems to be gone, we reach our destination only to discover that the beach, too, has vanished and the swimming hole become a series of rolling gravel bars. Dropping towels, hats, sarong, mini dress, and water bottles on a strip of packed mud, we stretch out in the shallow water between bars for an hour, and I catch up on my friend’s winter in Baja. While we visit, we’re aware of seven more dogs jogging by. A twosome of Newfies sporting dreadlocks are turned loose in the water nearby, and this new odor launches my friend into a tale of “The only thing worse-smelling than a wet dog is a wet chicken,” and I lie back, let the cool water lap my earlobes, happy to be regaled by her long-ago trials at chicken farming. It’s eventually a bank of black clouds sailing out of the mountains that drives us to packing up and picking our way back through the malodorous landscape.
Mother Nature’s changing nature, I easily forgive. Next time, my friend and I will arrive earlier and explore farther downriver for a new hole more divine than ever. The human destruction, however, is unbearable; it’s thoughtless, selfish, and wholly unnecessary. Mishandled feces rocket my ire . . . almost forty years of it, since I first began rowing rivers and landing on banks trashed with diapers, soiled toilet paper, and hastily hidden excrement. I’m thinking now Does our species never evolve in this department? If it’s not our own shit, it’s our dogs’? By morning, I’m bent on making a sign:
With the thermometer steaming at 98°F and spring’s gush of snow-melt having settled into a lazy flow, a friend and I head to our swimming hole of the past two years, the one left by the high, gouging run-off of 2010. We find the fishing access overflowing with parked cars, trucks, and raft trailers. Not a good sign for a Monday. But we know that the sandy banks by the bridge can be Coney Island-cluttered, rows of tanning bodies sprawled on Day-Glo beach towels, tilted umbrellas, beer coolers, boom boxes, and bevies of splashing kids—but by the time we complete a half-mile stroll through riparian woodland, our favorite beach will be private, peaceful, and delicious.
Straightaway, we take to the beaten path. Not ten feet in, dead center in the trail, we’re greeted by dog shit—a fresh pile, and I mean pile, three looping layers, two flies already. (With excrement my enduring subject, I’ve learned that flies can locate a new issuance in twenty seconds.) Thirty paces farther along, by trail’s edge, two more deposits appear—older, drier, half-squished. Well, YUK! I want to go home. Nooo, I can do this. It means a swim. And surely, we’re beyond the worst of it. Don’t dogs leap from a vehicle, immediately tuck their hind feet beneath them, hump up, and crap? The path will surely get better ahead. After the first meadow, we fork to the right and enter the filtered shade of pines and willows. Knee-high wildflowers abound—daises, St. Johnswort, and yellow clover, or bee plant. To someone else, this vegetation might be as sacred as medicinal herbs or as dastardly as weeds, but, in this moment, to me, it’s a heaven-sent visual, eliciting sighs. Look! Look!
Next we descend to an old cobblestone dry wash, dotted with new vegetation, and come abreast of a saucy stand of tansy, a long way from blooming; its yellow button blooms will delight in August. From it’s center waves a lone stalk of grass with an orchard-type seed head. The stalk, I stop to admire, examine, and coo over—it’s seven feet tall! I take a mental picture, with plans to look it up when I get home. We’ve encountered also, so far, a young Black Lab bounding toward us, until a voice from the left fork calls to it, plus a man and woman on the way out with a leashed pair of Shepherd-sized crossbreeds. Another two loose dogs are crawling up our back trail, but their owners must have turned off toward the inland pond because soon we lose them all.
We climb through the last of the cobbles, occasional old chunks of desiccated dog doo littering the way. Shortly, the path splits again, three choices. Good God, did canine anxiety of indecision cause this evacuation? Smack in the sandy forks sits another impressive heap, maybe as old as an hour. The specimen fairly bubbles under the blazing sun, its stench permeating the cosmos. Again we angle right, this time to catch our route along the sheer bank, where I’ve often stared down at large fish sleeping in a deep trough. But the path ends. In space. The bank and our old track has washed downriver, taking with it a dozen trees. Now the current slides across a wide pebbly slope, churning out new water music. There’s nothing for it but to backtrack and bushwhack through the tall grasses, trees, and tangles of deadfall. A strong ambient stink of dog shit lashes my senses. I’ve ceased to enjoy the scenery. My eyes stay peeled, scouting ahead for each plant of my foot, for fear of a misstep. Just beyond the location of last year’s bald-faced hornet’s nest, which also seems to be gone, we reach our destination only to discover that the beach, too, has vanished and the swimming hole become a series of rolling gravel bars. Dropping towels, hats, sarong, mini dress, and water bottles on a strip of packed mud, we stretch out in the shallow water between bars for an hour, and I catch up on my friend’s winter in Baja. While we visit, we’re aware of seven more dogs jogging by. A twosome of Newfies sporting dreadlocks are turned loose in the water nearby, and this new odor launches my friend into a tale of “The only thing worse-smelling than a wet dog is a wet chicken,” and I lie back, let the cool water lap my earlobes, happy to be regaled by her long-ago trials at chicken farming. It’s eventually a bank of black clouds sailing out of the mountains that drives us to packing up and picking our way back through the malodorous landscape.
Mother Nature’s changing nature, I easily forgive. Next time, my friend and I will arrive earlier and explore farther downriver for a new hole more divine than ever. The human destruction, however, is unbearable; it’s thoughtless, selfish, and wholly unnecessary. Mishandled feces rocket my ire . . . almost forty years of it, since I first began rowing rivers and landing on banks trashed with diapers, soiled toilet paper, and hastily hidden excrement. I’m thinking now Does our species never evolve in this department? If it’s not our own shit, it’s our dogs’? By morning, I’m bent on making a sign:
By noon, I’ve rethought it all, toned it down (actually slapped it way back from what you’re seeing here). I have designs on establishing a garbage can, a supply of plastic bags, a message with pleasant, helpful, inspiring instructions . . . like the walking paths in the city of Missoula. Two questions remain: Just whom should I lobby to fund it—Fish, Wildlife, and Parks? And to tend it? A local scout troop?
Then, in 2018, I discovered what was missing in my humor that day—HUMOR!
Then, in 2018, I discovered what was missing in my humor that day—HUMOR!
Now this one is considerably BETTER!!! (Found six years later, June, 2018, on dogtime.com)
And I rather liked this one! (Found also June, 2018, on dogpoopsigns.com, but it’s 24 bucks.)
Three days pass and the full-on foul smell lingers, if not up my nose, then at the front of my mind. Yet my usual get-up-and-go has, in mid-July’s heat, drooped like a tired balloon. Exhaustion rules. I’ve grass to mow, two marmots to trap before they nip off the rest of my porch plants, a barn to clean, a book to research, a blog to write, and now—in between it all—weeping: Where will I swim?
Dogs-Running-Free-with-the-Wind is one symbol of Big Sky freedom that’s bunk. What’s acceptable in the wide-open of sheep or cattle ranchs is not OK on sacred river paths.
Dogs-Running-Free-with-the-Wind is one symbol of Big Sky freedom that’s bunk. What’s acceptable in the wide-open of sheep or cattle ranchs is not OK on sacred river paths.
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© 2011 by Author Kathleen Meyer • All Rights Reserved
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© 2011 by Author Kathleen Meyer • All Rights Reserved
Web site design by RapidRiver.us