Attention [with] dog — Jan 14, 2023

Isaac Morrison

5 min read

·

Oct 18, 2026

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Jan 14.1
It’s gray and overcast at 7:40 when Trixie and I make it out the door. We are greeted with a companion crow call and a couple of anonymous chirps from a distant tree. The temperature is just a little bit above freezing, which wouldn’t be a problem, but the wind keeps kicking up, intrusively pushing the breeze down my collar. I put the hood of my sweatshirt up, but it’s immediately clear that the hood interferes with the clarity and directionality of my hearing. I can sort of hear the things in front of me a bit better, like a radar dish, but everything else becomes muddled and vague, so I leave it down. I can’t afford to lose my dynamic audio range, since I’ve got shit vision and a mediocre sense of smell.

Almost immediately after rounding the corner onto 26th Street, I spot a squirrel in the crook of a tree, which makes me feel perceptive and canny. The morning reverie of birds, however, is not so noticeable right now. I hear a small bird chirping faintly, but not much else. Then, from the other end of the block I hear a sharp long, drawn-out peep, which intrigues me until I realize that it’s just the squeaking brakes of a car pulling out of a parking spot. There’s another crow call, but no more signs of life until I turn right onto Guilford where I hear a few house finches as we’re heading away from 26th. Even those are subdued though; maybe the wind has dampened their enthusiasm. It is pushing strongly to the south, but its speed undulates up and down. Flags are a useful visual tool for measuring wind speed, but in this case, there are none around. I imagine myself as a flag and based on this my guess is that it’s gusting between 10 and15 miles per hour. But I really have no idea. It’s just a shot in the dark.

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The east/west cross streets are a bit more sheltered from the wind, so the last bit of our walk is a little less brisk. We are flanked by the decades-old sycamores of my street as we stroll home. Not sycamores. London Planes. They became a popular urban sidewalk tree because they are tolerant of heat, pollution, and root-compaction. The downside is they drop leaves and pieces of bark pretty much year-round. The result is a messy but beautiful tree. There’s a chirping call from a tree on the other side of the street, but the wind creates too much white noise, and the phone app just can’t grab a good enough audio signal to identify what we’re hearing.

Jan 14.2
Out by myself around 11:00 to collect some hawthorn berries. With a small step ladder, the berries on the lower branches are quite accessible and I have about 2 lb. of berries in less than 20 minutes. With a slightly taller ladder, I’ll be able to easily get twice that while leaving an abundance for the hungry birds later this winter. I get some curious stares from folks driving slowly past. There are not many pedestrians out in the cold, and generally the passersby have one of two reactions: either they are curious about what I am doing and respond in a very positive fashion, or they just act like I’m not there — as if there is definitely not a big weird dude picking berries off a tree on a residential street-corner and putting them in a big brown paper bag. Their actions are similar to what I’d expect if I were a half-dressed man standing on the sidewalk staring at the sky and talking to himself. The same thing happens when I pick mulberries from public trees. Foragers, I suspect, are largely regarded as potentially crazy persons by the average observer. After picking the first two pounds of berries I go home for a taller ladder and collect another 2 lbs. A passing neighbor mentions that he’s seen multiple people picking the berries over the past year, including a guy who pulled a truck up and picked them while standing in the truck bed. Clever. Who’s a crazy person now? Another individual, more skeptical, expresses concern about the potentially toxic nature of the berries. “You shouldn’t eat those.” He says emphatically. When I mention that Hawthorn has medicinal qualities and can be used to make tea for high blood pressure, he concedes that he has high blood pressure, and says he’ll ask his doctor about it. He leaves quickly, uninterested in further discussion.

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Jan 14.3
Out for a walk at 5:00pm with Trixie. Crisp and dry outside. There is still some wind, but not as much as earlier this morning, though it kicks up into gusts periodically as we walk. Watching Trixie interact with the markings of other dogs is sort of like watching an extended asynchronous call and response. Like collaborating via email. Pee-mail. In the meantime, I catch bits of cooking food smells, but I’m still having a tough time identifying anything specific. I am starting to notice the way that the smell of exhaust ebbs and flows as clots of cars roll past. It seems obvious in retrospect, but I’ve never actually paid attention to it before. With the wind and the chilly temperature, birds are continuing to stay scarce. Cumulus clouds spread broadly across the sky with just enough space between them that the slivers and bits of blue still show through. As the day relaxes into night it feels as though the temperature has dropped a few degrees just in the ten minutes since we walked out the door.

Jan 14.4
Last walk of the night. Cold and quiet. Except for, of course, the ubiquitous city traffic. There’s a mildly sweet smell in the air as we walk up Barclay. The breeze whispers through the branches of what trees still have leaves. Felix still holds vigil in his final resting place, surprisingly unchanged from day to day. The green grasses around the base of many of the trees along Guilford are turning back to brown as the temperature dips down towards freezing more frequently. Turning south on Guilford. I’m struck by the potent tailpipe smell from an old Volvo mixing with the odor of cooking food. Both pungent and sharp on the nose. The night offers little more that my attention can grasp.\

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