It was a trip from town, up the freeway, onto rural highways, across the bridge, down a logging road through the forest, to the Hood Canal.

I’ve been here before, said Scooter’s nose to brain, scent receptors, thousands of times sharper than those of his people, identifying the freeway, the bridge, but then, Wait — this part is new—Logging road?

The Hood Canal fjord, the major, western basin of Puget Sound, is hooked and closed at its bottom, and sloppy about exchanging its water through the rhythmic cycle of tides. No great cleansing here. Still, the canal is rich with river water, shrimp, oysters, and salmon. It is the essential barrier between the warring ways of Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas. 

We headed there with Scooter, whose heritage —retriever and poodle — has prepared him well for water, but to this point in his fourteen months of life, not yet this way tested.

Arrive we did. Off the leash he was! In the woods he ran! Crazy with joy he was as he familiarized himself with the campsite bank, some fifty or so feet above the Hood Canal shore. 

“Scooter, come!” shouted his people who encouraged him to abandon his reluctance toward narrow, steep steps down to — Who knew? Down to what?

The canal. That’s what.

What can you do when the people you are responsible for are moving down a treacherous, wind-whipped trail of twisting steps? You go with them. You are responsible for them. You find yourself on a beach loaded with logs to jump, sticks to carry, gulls to chase, and oyster shells. It’s an Oh Boy! moment, an existential exercise in ecstatic. Responsibilities abandoned!

Then, “OH!” You see it. You smell water, and you know that saltwater smell! The moment becomes an exclamation mark! 

Take to it!

Scooter took.

The canal’s seemingly friendly fringe waits for just such a romper. Scooter romped and the fringe revealed its true, devious form.

The quietly lapping, seemingly benign line between blue water and sandy shore concealed a mucky, sticky, muddy mixture of grey clay and decaying eel grass just waiting to be stirred up, waiting to be carried off to make a mess of other things and places. The romper roared in, up to his knees. He leapt, he trotted, he sank some, he snapped at stuff. He emerged. He submitted to what it took to clean him up enough to return him to the car, to sleep his way home, to submit to a full bath, to restore his silly beauty. 

His reward? The same after every bath. He romps the rooms with his conquered towel.