adventure

Marley & Koda

I had heard a lot about Marley before ever meeting him. I was in a long-distance relationship, and my girlfriend would regale me with stories of the fantastic adventures Marley and his likely reluctant co-conspirator, Koda, would go on after escaping from a perfectly good backyard. Marley, a large loveable Golden Retriever, and Koda, a black Lab mix, lived in a nice home in a Charlotte suburb.

Like most Golden’s, Marley did not believe there was such a thing as being to close to his humans and would stand on his hind lakes and wrap you in a hug that looked like you were going to take a spin on the dance floor. Or, if you were sitting, he would try to become a 100-pound lap dog. Marley had a crooked nose, and when he looked at me, I was reminded of one of those characters in the movies who played a hustler or bookie, with a Fedora hat, chewing on an unlit cigar.

I came into the relationship with the suspicion that he was intelligent from everything he had been able to accomplish during his bouts of unrestrained freedom after escaping. On a couple of occasions, he had covered multiple miles and would have navigated some busy thoroughfares. In addition to looking out for himself, he had Koda to look out for as well.

I did not realize it when we first met, but soon I would be locked into a battle of wits and wills with this formidable opponent. As a man trying to impress his girlfriend, I may have mentioned a certain familiarity with tools and a rudimentary knowledge of building and fixing things. My girlfriend was smart; she didn’t ask me to fix anything but made a point of telling me what was wrong. When I didn’t take the bait, she then said,  “can you think of anything we could do to keep Marley from escaping?” Having never owned a dog, I was unfamiliar with the energy and tenacity dogs exhibit when feeling constrained inside a lush shady backyard.

The challenge, now verbalized, put me into a no-win situation. The gauntlet had been thrown down, and I would have to take on this slippery escape artist. I was familiar with Escape from Alcatraz and knew Marley, like Clint Eastwood, had plenty of time each day for planning, so I would need to be one step ahead.

When assessing the yard for the first time, it was painfully obvious where the weakness lie and the cure, as simple as a couple of cement cinder blocks. Once I had the blocks in place, I assured my girlfriend of the futility of any future attempts by the pair to escape. She didn’t look as confident, but took a wait and see approach.

I had overlooked the possibility of other dogs roaming free and taunting our jailbirds in the process. The cinder blocks proved to be no match for Marley, and the pair fashioned a workaround in a matter of days. Now a new ingredient called pride was involved and the fact that an intelligent Golden Retriever was not going to outsmart the boyfriend.

Walking into their domain and after being smothered by the two for petting attention, I walked the complete perimeter of the fence looking for the weak points. I could tell Marley was watching me, and I believe I detected a bit of smugness in his crooked nose smile. Later talking with my girlfriend, she casually mentioned she had some components for putting up an electric fence. I immediately had visions of wire stretching for miles, and instinctively knew it would involve a lot of work.

The fence definitely had merit, there was way too much perimeter to protect with obstacles. After consulting the internet on installation, I took the components my girlfriend had and purchased two large bags of insulators.

On the install, I tried to keep the wire as close to the ground as possible so that digging underneath would not be an option. Once I had the bright yellow insulators installed, and the wire stretching between them, I watched Marley walk the perimeter looking at the new fortifications. It reminded me of Jurassic Park and how the Velociraptor’s looked for weaknesses in the fence line. Koda, less interested, stayed more to the center of the yard, letting Marley do his reconnaissance.

I was worried about one section where the terrain took a sudden dip in the middle of one fence section, and that dip could provide a bit of an opening in an otherwise secure perimeter. I was not overly concerned because it would only allow access into the neighbor’s yard, which was also fenced.

The next day when my girlfriend returned from work, she found the two in the neighbor’s yard. I wouldn’t say at this point that the two were taunting me, but they were surely talking behind my back.

This time when I went into the yard, I had my bag of insulators, a roll of wire, a hammer, and my determination. Both dogs watched as I turned the breach into something more resembling a power grid. Wires wound around insulators and switched back until the final wire was only two inches from the earth. Marley acting nonchalant, waited until I finished before checking it out for himself.

Marley and Koda, were finally contained, and protected from crossing dangerous roads and getting into other mischief on far-flung adventures. The two had a knack for finding well to do homes or farms to be voluntarily captured and where the occupants treated them like prodigal sons. One time when visiting my house in West Columbia, a gate was accidentally left open, and they went on an adventure that ended with the two getting a ride home in a police cruiser. When the cruiser pulled into the driveway, the two were sitting straight up in the backseat like a couple of passengers in a police Uber enjoying the scenery and happy to be home for dinner.

Both Marley and Koda have now passed on, but their unconditional love, unique personalities, and adventurous spirit lives on in our memories.  

Invisible Within

There is something magical about a dense fog or a snowstorm for a kid. It might have to do with a desire to be invisible like a Superhero, or because the conditions are conducive to an adventurous imagination. It was that type of weather the night Dan Billings, a student at Our Holy Saints Catholic school, called his best friend and classmate Bobby Nettles. The boys lived directly across the street from each other, and if you snapped a chalk line between their homes, their front doors would be perfectly aligned. The boys both in the seventh grade had become fast friends since Dan moved into the neighborhood from somewhere in the south, where it never snowed.

Bobby loved winter, and he especially liked snowstorms like the one stirring tonight. “Do you want to see if we can get lost in the blizzard,” Dan said without saying hello when Bobby answered the phone. Bobby wasn’t sure he would characterize the current storm as a bonafide blizzard, but he could hear the high pitch strong winds make when forced into tight spaces. “Sure,” Bobby responded, “what do you have in mind?”
“I was out a few minutes ago letting in “Big,” and I saw snow drifting so thick I couldn’t see your side of the street.” “Big,” a large black lab Dan’s family brought with them when they moved, sometimes made Bobby nervous by the way he looked at him.

The idea of disappearing into a storm sounded like a good cure for the boredom that often-accompanied Christmas break. The boys agreed they would meet in the street in front of their houses in 30 minutes.

It is no small matter dressing for severe weather, and there is an order to the process of layering. Long Johns comprised the first layer; wool socks pulled above the leg bottoms came next. Heavy corduroy or jean pants went over the Long Johns, and a thick button-down lumberjack type shirt tucked into the pants finished the base. Two additional garments pulled over the lumberjack shirt ensured maximum core warmth. Next came the lacing up of thick rubber boots before putting on an outer jacket that worked best if it had some waterproof properties. The jacket fastened or zipped to its maximum closure, with its collar flipped up, allowed for the wrapping of a scarf to protect the neck and chin area. A stocking cap pulled down low on the forehead, and leather choppers completed the ensemble. The choppers, thick wool gloves inserted into a leather sleeve with one cavity for the thumb and a larger cavity for the rest of the fingers. The gloves and boots were sometimes placed on top of a radiator or gas stove, giving them a head start against the cold.

Bobby, the first out of his house, looked down the street, and could see Dan had been right about the storm. The snow falling was not the usual large flakes; this snow was smaller ice crystals falling by the millions that stung his face in sudden gusts. The roar of the wind through the tall elms lining their street sounded like the rush of a waterfall. The winds started up without warning, rushing violently through the branches for several seconds before subsiding.

Bobby saw an arch of yellow light reflected on the snow when Dan opened and closed the side door of his house. A few seconds later, he saw Dan trudging from the shadows, crossing his front yard, and heading toward the street. At least, Bobby, guessed it was Dan; there was not enough of his face exposed to make a positive ID. The two boys met in the middle of the deserted street, and stood without talking for few minutes, admiring the beauty of the storm. A curtain of white began moving toward them from further up the block, quickly followed by the sound of rushing wind. They turned their backs against the blowing snow before it hit them, and for a few seconds, disappeared within the white-out.  When the wind subsided, they agreed their best route was into the storm toward the large urban lake lying a few blocks from their homes.

After traveling along the residential streets, the homes ran out, leaving approximately a hundred yards of green space to the shoreline with paths for walkers, bikers, and beach-goers in warmer months. Tonight, none of those things were recognizable, or the idea that warmer weather ever occurred in the space.

The city had strung cheap wooden fences for snow barriers along the shoreline like they did every year. The barriers were supposed to keep drifting snow off the lake from ending up in the roadway. The fences were nearly covered, and snow drifting over their tops looked like thin smoke swirling in the air before being whisked away on strong wind currents. Beyond the fences, there was nothing but white; no sky, no foreground or lake ice just the falling and drifting snow creating a veil impenetrable to the human eye.

Dan and Bobby, standing on the corner of the street that ended in front of the lake, watched in amazement at the blizzard conditions occurring over the wide expanse of frozen lake. They could sense danger in their pursuit of adventure, and if they were to continue, going out onto the ice is where adventure beckoned.

They had not seen a single car, unusual for a city with over a quarter of a million people. Turning to their right, they followed Lake Drive, walking a quarter block to the entrance of the beach parking lot. It was hard to discern where driveways and parking lots began and ended; all the terrain being leveled into a contiguous plane of white.

There was a break in the snow barrier at the head of the beach allowing access to the lake. Walking down across the snow-covered sand that formed the beach, they arrived at the lakes frozen edge, and already invisible from the road. In front of them, lie only white, and choosing to enter that world of isolation and chaos, accomplished their mission of disappearing within the storm.

It was nearly 10:00 PM when the boy’s families noticed them missing, and the storm raged on throughout the night and into the early morning hours while setting new records for snowfall and wind speeds in its wake. The powerful winds pushing drifts onto the shoreline, buried the snow barriers and in some places, those drifts exceeded ten feet in height. The Lake Road, as well as most residential streets, were impassable for days.

The boys never returned from their adventure and were never seen again. There is a presumption they had foolishly tried to challenge Mother Nature’s power and lost. But I would rather believe within the fury of nature’s violence; there might lie opportunities to escape into other worlds where imagination, exploration, and adventure are still alive.