Like the Rising Kite

Just as a kite needs resistance to fly, so my thoughts needed opposition to coalesce.- S. Catalano

Summer in the desert means early morning risings. Throughout my working life, I always had jobs that required an early start to my day. In alignment with my natural circadian rhythms, I am a morning person, and even in retirement, I wake up with the dawn. Depending on the season, first on the agenda is something creative. My brain is sharp, and inspiration flows.

My office window faces east, and, oh, how I love when the soft rays of sunlight peek over the ridge of the Santa Catalina mountain range. Streaming through my window with increasing intensity, bathing my keyboard in natural light, my fingers strike and my thoughts congeal. Coherent and concise, the words turn into a story.

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This routine works six months out of the year. The sweet spot is when temperatures are mild. But when the seasons change, the sun is no longer a gentle writing companion. Morning starts with a blast of intrusive light interrupting my REM sleep. Abrupt is the best adjective.

Dragging my sleepwalking carcass out of bed, I put on clothes. It is hard to say I am dressed when, through half-opened eyes, nothing is in focus. These summer mornings, we take advantage of the cooler temps. First on the agenda is our morning walk.

Winnie is not a morning “person,” but she seems to understand the need for expediency. She would rather slink back into bed, but inspiration with a luring treat gets her harnessed up. She knows the walk will end with breakfast. There is much to be said about the right incentives.

Having always been a flexible person by nature, I am proud of my ability to adapt. In the winter months, my computer is lit before I can clear the sleep from my eyes. This routine gets flipped upside down in the summer when, on the up-before-dawn walks, I am scanning the scenery for night critters who have yet to retire. Despite my flexible nature, I find myself at odds with the summer months.

Whether it is summer or winter, the creative juices trickle in like a spigot with a worn-out gasket. Whenever it hits me, a story is born. This morning, on the pre-dawn constitutional, the idea for a story congealed.

Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.-- Winston Churchill.

Being that she is a pug-beagle mix, Winnie is, by nature of her breeding, an independent thinker. From both purebred parents, she has a powerful independent drive and can focus on what she wants regardless of anything much else. This makes for a great sniffing dog, but is a lot of work for me the rest of the time. Unless we are searching for target odor, Winnie and I are much of the time in opposition.

“No man can follow a rollicking, bungling, and overjoyous pup all day without laughing a lot and crying a little.”— Havilah Babcock

As a detection dog, I need to honor her with agency to decide. On our walk-abouts, when it is safe, I allow Winnie to lead the way. When she detects an interesting smell, be it critter or canine, I love to watch her work it. I gather up my patience and let the walk be about her. But sometimes the adversarial nature of it gets to me.

Just as she works during a search, Winnie does all the things we call behavior changes. Head lifts or head dips. Stutter steps and sharp turns. Winnie brackets the odor cone and daisy-petals in and out. She pin-points, catches edges, chases odor out, then follows it back in until bam!, she sources whatever caught her by the olfactory.

One time she flushed a cat from its slumber in the shrubs along the sidewalk behind a retaining wall that was just the right height for her to stand on hind legs to “source.” it. Another time, she worked intensely around a hedge, then dove in with her head. From out of the bushes, Winnie pulled a taquito that had been discarded therein. I can report the cat didn’t want to flee, nor did Winnie want to chase it, and the taquito caused neither pancreatitis nor food poisoning. And learning as I go, I watch what she is doing with increasing scrutiny.

With the knowledge and experience garnered from studying nose work for years now, I can read Winnie well enough to tell when she is ready to pounce on something she deems edible and head her off at the pass. I can tell when she is sniffing a coyote or javelina and how different she looks between the two.

With this ability to read her, I can stop her before she ingests some undesirable tidbit. I can let her become aroused by a critter smell and evaluate it for as long as she wants to satisfy her needs. This gives her time to process her excitement and come back to a healthy mental state. And best of all, with her strong propensity to mark when she is sniffing a canine message, I can let her sniff and sniff until she finds the exact spot to leave her own response.

I would love to have a button that gives me a more pliable dog. If I had a switch to flip, I could turn Winnie on for detection work and then relax back when the nose is in the off position. But that isn’t how dogs work, is it? And walking time is for Winnie, right? Yes, I have to watch her like a hawk. No, I can’t decide to stay on the shady side of the street if all the delightful smells are on the sunny side. It is a lot of work, and sometimes my irritation rises.

While it is fine to let Winnie have free will, sometimes it isn’t possible or practical. Like after a rain, when humidity enhances the smells, so the life-sustaining moisture activates the bugs. Winnie wants to soak in the odors, leaving me standing still in a swarm of gnats. Or when she is sniffing the edges of a shrub and she is short enough to be shielded from the sun while I stand above the bush in direct reach of the burning rays.

And so, for the hot months, I put my keyboard fingers on hold. I focus on Winnie because she is, much to the dismay of a lot of folks, the most important thing to me. We walk when the temps are low, and I follow her hither and yon. Under my attentive eyes, Winnie hasn’t a care in the world, and she will linger over a smell, savoring each molecule, while I am often left flapping my arms impatiently. But even in this mental state of frustration, my creative mind is at work.

It was towards the end of the walk today that a conclusive idea came to mind about something I have been facing for a few years now. We were making our way towards the car on the left side of the street when Winnie’s nose decided we needed to stay on the right. I pulled, and she resisted. It was during that struggle of wills that inspiration hit me.

Just as a kite needs resistance to fly, so my thoughts needed opposition to coalesce. Unbeknownst to her, and with the perfect amount of opposition, Winnie pushed my kite beyond the spiral of thoughts that had been going ‘round.

Plagued by a pattern that no longer serves me, I have been stuck. Mulling over the state of my well-being, I could not move forward. Today, with the right resistance, I may have risen to a new orbit. A higher thought process that will allow me to soar.

As a metaphor for change, I can see what will need to be done to solve another problem. I will share this new idea with you, but not today.

Today’s story is about inspiration in a most unusual form. The lesson is not where the inspiration led me. That story awaits an ending, which I will provide soon enough before I’m finished.

Now is the time to ponder some more over what this revelation means. I will wait for coalescence. I will continue to walk Winnie, embracing her opposing stance, while welcoming whatever inspiration it offers. Maybe she will provide the next gust of wind to pull my kite even higher, and push me to write the rest of the story.

Time may change me, but I can’t trace time.— David Bowie

Within the presence of resistance, inspiration can be found.—S. Catalano