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I got my contributor copies of the Pacific NorthWest Reader today.  The UPS truck pulled up to the driveway just as Dinah and I were setting off on our walk.  We were outside and I was zipping up my sweatshirt.  Dinah didn’t want anything to do with the UPS man and was able to wriggle her head out of her collar as I was holding on to it to make sure she didn’t run off, or at him.  Collarless, she retreated about five feet and sat down next to my car and gave him a single bark.  Silly girl.

We should be getting our copies in at the store soon.  It looks great.  And guess what-there’s a quote from my essay on the back.  How neat is that?  Carl Lennertz, the editor, send along some bright red stickers that read ‘Contains an essay by someone in this store.’  I can’t wait to put them on the store copies and display the books up front and force everyone to buy at least one.

Gigi at Powell’s Books in Portland has been blogging about the Pacific Northwest Reader and yesterday she highlighted A Walk with Dinah, my essay about walking Dinah at Creamer’s Field.  Check it out. We should be getting our copies in the store soon.  I can’t wait to see it.

Dinah and I took an early morning walk at Creamer’s today.  The geese have arrived and were oblivious to Dinah’s attentions.  She’d love to run into the field and scatter them, send them flying, but there’s no way that’s going to happen.  (The fields are closed now that the birds are here and I’m certain if anyone saw her running through them we’d be banned for life.)  The ground was still a little frozen so we didn’t get as muddy as we did the last time we went.

The woods were quiet, peaceful, except for the occasional squawk of geese and the far-off beep-beep of a truck reversing.  (Somewhere, someone was doing construction work.  Don’t they know that the world is supposed to be quiet at eight thirty in the morning?)  I let Dinah choose the trail and she took us down the one we had taken on Wednesday when we went for a walk with my friend Toni and Ace, her little Jack Russell Terrier.

The snow is almost gone and there’s a whole winter’s worth of doggie poop along the side of the trail.  Can’t people clean up after their dogs?  I always bring a baggie and there’s a stash of them at the trailhead.  Sure, it’s all going to get mixed into the soil eventually, but I think it’s disrespectful of the place to not scoop your puppy’s poop.

It’s a great place to go, filled with all sorts of interesting scents for Dinah (not just the poop of her fellow canines).  To find out more about Creamer’s Field, check out their website. And to read more about Dinah’s adventures at Creamer’s Field, buy The Pacific Northwest Reader.  It’s only available through Indie bookstores, $10.95 for some great reads about the PacNW and your dollars go to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.  It’s charitable.

It’s spring!  The sky is starting to get bright at five o’clock in the morning and staying that way until well after ten at night.  The snow is melting and a temporary river flows through my backyard and the moose are roaming the neighborhood.  They’re funny, gangly creatures.This one was eating snow in my front yard (which was probably filled with a winter’s worth of Dinah-excrement) for several minutes, after it satisfied its curiosity about what Nick was doing to my car.Its mom was nearby, she crossed the street and started munching.They’re stripping the branches bare before the buds have a chance to bloom.  Temperatures are nice and warm, forties (and fifties if we’re lucky) in the middle of the day, cooling down to about freezing at night.  I don’t wear a jacket to work anymore.  There was a sprinkling of fresh snow on the ground this morning, but it was gone in the afternoon.  I can’t wait for the explosion of green; it’s just a few short weeks away.