Coyote

This evening I went for a walk with Sanford along this area where there is all this bleached driftwood that gets caught in the dam and then bakes for years in the sun. I'm making a friend a present and I needed to find some straight pieces of worn wood to frame it. Sanford is afraid of steep descents, so I couldn't get him to join me down at the lakeside. Instead he stayed about ten meters above me up on the road and trotted alongside me as I picked over the wood specimens. Seeing Sanford, my car, but no me, a lady on her way home stopped and called out my name. I answered, and she asked if I had noticed the coyotes out on the lake looking at me. There were two of them, frozen, staring, about a football field away. Close by animal standards. 

"You better be careful out here," she cautioned. "Those coyotes'll gang up on your dog you know."

"No kidding. Look at them just staring at us," I replied.

"They're obviously out hunting, and now they're watching us."

"It's getting dark anyways," I said, "so I think I should probably get going. I've found what I needed."

"Yeah. I'd be careful. You just can't trust 'em. Especially hearing all that stuff on the news in the last few years about them attacking people. Just can't trust them out here," she said as I ambled up the steep embankment back onto the road. 

"Well, Sue, thanks for stopping to see if I was okay," I said.

"Of course. You just never know around here. Wanted to make sure you were alright. Saw Sanford here running down the road on his own and that is something strange to see at this time a night. Well, you take care," she said, shutting the door of her idling truck.

I walked the few hundred meters back to my car, my eye on the two black specks now on the other side of the lake. The only sound I could hear was their faint yipping to each other as they trotted along the opposite bank. When I got back to the car I watched them moving. Were they moving towards us now? I couldn't tell. Gentle baying, "woo OOOO, woo OOOO, woo OOO" as they strode on a diagonal from each other, the rear dog keeping perfect pace with the lead. As the night bled out into the stars and the white topped lake turned the blueish hue of twilight, my eyes began to strain, but my ears were lulled into a feeling of safety by the peaceful quiet of this mountain town, the shallow calling of the coyotes dripping my thoughts in the solitude of this very moment.

Down at Lajoie dam before the winter froze over the lake.