Sniffing around the garden with Gracie

Nocturnal expeditions with Gracie have ignited a new circadian rhythm in me. It frequently

strikes around 3am in concert with Gracie’s explosive head shaking, tags clicking and clacking

in noisy metronomic arcs. I wait motionless in my bed. If I don’t make a sound... Too late, my

breathing pattern has changed, sending a text to my bladder. Upsey daisy to the loo - the watery

grave of all hope of sleeping through the night. We are up and the ritual is afoot.

“Please let it not be raining,” I pray as I close my eyes. Gracie is racing for the stairs, running in

circles. “Yup, here we go, my little nightmare in a dog suit, here we go!” I shove my already

freezing feet into the first pair of boots I touch in the downstairs closet. UGGs, once worn by my

college roommate’s mother. UGGs never die and at 3:00 am with nothing but a mini flashlight

and a cocker spaniel with a persistent ear infection, these UGGs offer warmth, steadfastness

and security.

I love the clarity of winter nights. I always look up when we are out at this hour (thanks to the

well worn earthbound UGGS!) It was “bliss” I felt the first time I identified the big skyward

swoosh as the Milky Way. There’s the North Star and the Dippers. All astral memories I retrieve

from a childhood trove of treasured outings with my Dad at the Cape. Memories augmented with

so many years of sailing, not sleeping, but gazing at the azimuth of our course and wondering

about everything in the spaces in between. It’s bliss I feel again and again with Gracie in the star

sprinkled blackness by a tidal river that commutes daily to and from the Atlantic.

Suddenly, something has changed. I find myself looking down, not up. Gracie is alert, ears

cocked, she surveys the night, then nose down, she cruises the land. She is in communion with

novel orchestras of earthy sounds, smells and spring delights taking over the frosty stillness of

our wintry nights. Gracie experiences the present and the future through her nostrils. She

moves with deliberate purpose. A change in the indent or smell of a footprint signals new

nocturnal visitors passing. The chill of the frozen ground gives way to old grasses numbing the

touch of her paw pads and muffling sounds stirring in the ground below. She sniffs along,

sensing the bustle of critters stirring and shoots stretching.

I study her closely to imagine what she is learning. I am developing an imaginary scientific

method for canine sniffing data gathering, collection and analysis of living things. I see it as a

multi-dimensional with infinite points and vertices constantly reacting and changing. Sniffing is a

sentient activity. It reveals an enormous amount of data - all around us all at once. That is

evident from the way Gracie approaches her work. In these weeks we are enveloped in the arcs

and angles of change. We are witnesses to things we cannot see but sense in the spaces in

between winter and spring. In this bliss of all things past and passing we ramble in an enormous

cloud cover of possibility. The stirrings underground, the undaunted annual poking and prodding

of the crocus and daffodil bulbs --- it’s all happening right under our noses!

– Lorna Miles