Clover’s mother, Cinnamon, a Chocolate Lab, was nursing a litter of 10 pups, the result of a romance with a Pointer down the road from her family’s farmhouse in Pepperell, Mass.

Clover was the runt. Her brothers and sisters had the blocky, barrel chest build of a Lab. Clover had her father’s more svelte physique, and a solid chestnut brown coat. Her birth family called her ‘Peanut.’ She was barely two weeks old when we picked her out, a squirmy thing no bigger than my boot. We took her home once she was weaned, several weeks later. Karen’s daughter Jaime dubbed her Clover.

Clover graduated through the usual house training, with the usual accidents and mistakes. She was content to gnaw chew toys while teething; I don’t recall losing any shoes, or any damaged furniture.

Clover liked to dig out in the yard, and no barrier or scolding could dissuade her. She made nests in the shade of bushes, scraping out a hollow where she could curl up and doze. When she was very young, she would try to dig under fences, but she let up in her middle age. Curiously, she never learned to push open a door left ajar.

When Clover was old enough, we took an obedience course, and learned to pay closer attention to each other. I’d say we were both solid ‘B’ students. She didn’t always do what she was told, but neither do I. She was willful, not stupid. She learned at least two- dozen words, in time.  In addition to her name, her vocabulary included: walk, run, stay, go, out, ball, stick, come, heel, sit, food, treat, biscuit, carrot, down, good, bad, no, drop it, jump and yay!

Some words had special meanings. At first, “Get the squirrel,” meant just that. She very nearly caught one, once, and hadn’t a clue what to do next. The fun was in trying. The phrase evolved to serve as a euphemism for a tour of the backyard, a chance to take care of business. We learned special commands, too, for bicycling with her on a leash, or skijoring.

Her own spoken vocabulary was limited, and she kept quiet most of the time. Her bark sounded great and terrible for anyone who came to our door, belying the sweet heart and wagging tail behind it.

Clover was 2 years old when our son Evan was born. On the advice of maternity nurses, I brought one of his tiny snap-on shirts home for Clover to smell before she met him. She was glad to see me – it had been a while – but indifferent to the cloth I kept waving in her face. When Evan came home, she sniffed him gently, and slept on the floor beside his crib every night.

Clover was a rover, and a natural athlete. Her enthusiasm for forest and field, mud puddle, stream or pond was boundless and contagious. We were a good match that way, she and I, though her speed and endurance far exceeded mine. When leashed, she would pull constantly, panting and gasping, straining to pick up the pace. She knew it annoyed me, and I suspect she did it purposely. If she could make the leash as bothersome to me as it was to her, I could sometimes be persuaded to take it off and let her run.

I indulged her instincts by taking Clover along while mountain biking or cross-country skiing. We would ride for hours through the woods off Grater Road in Merrimack, by Dunklee Pond in Hollis or elsewhere. I stuck to the trails, while she ran cross-country in wide circles around me, winding through the brush, leaping logs and stone walls, plunging through puddles and leaping into pools and streams. We’d end up back at the car, both splattered with mud, tired, hungry and infested with ticks. The pleasures of exertion, fresh air, blue skies and sunlight were all the sweeter for having shared them. Clover would curl up in the back of the car, and then, once home, eat like a lion and sleep like a stone.

The Lab side of Clover loved to swim, but the Pointer part wanted something to chase. She’d stand dripping wet and quivering with anticipation waiting for me to fling a stick. Last summer she pursued a canoe on Lake Contoocook.

Clover reveled in fresh snow, bounding through it like a porpoise. She seldom had any trouble with iced paws, though we learned to avoid salty streets. We settled on the Hollis Town Forest and Dunklee Pond trails for our usual ski outings. Clover would run all about, as usual, and twice she ran off completely. The first time, I found her back beside the car.

Another time, she wound up on someone’s doorstep somewhere in Hollis, asking nicely to come inside. They let her curl up by the woodstove, and phoned to track us down (she was always licensed and tagged). Meanwhile, I wandered the woods, desolate and hoarse from calling Clover, until Karen got the call, collected Clover and found me. Cell phones weren’t so common in those days.

That experience led me to the sport of skijor. I ordered for Clover a custom-sewn harness with neoprene padding, which slipped around her neck and across her chest, and hooked onto a line, with the other end clipped to a wide belt around my waist. We would ski together, as a team.

We started at the Nashua Country Club to get used to the new arrangement, then took it to the trails. Clover seemed to know instinctively to stick to the trail, so we had only to work out a series of commands. “Halt” meant we would slow down, or pause for a moment. “Hey!” meant that we were about to change course, and when repeated several times, signified a right turn. I found “right” too hard to enunciate when I was out of breath. “Left” meant “left,” and she already knew to run.

Once we got the hang of it, we often skijored at Beaver Brook. With Clover towing, I would crouch and just push with my poles as the first mile or two flew past. The few times I skied without her, I found myself frustrated by how much slower I skied alone.

The equipment came handy at other times, too. When Evan was old enough (and until he was too old), I jogged with him in a stroller and Clover on a leash, attached to the belt around my waist.

We cut back on skijoring a few years back when she was 10, and gave it up completely by the time she was 12. Her stride got stiff, and she began taking Glucosamine and anti-inflammatory medicine for arthritis in her hips, but Clover stayed active to the end. She still came along skiing, but I didn’t make her pull.

Her opportunities for exercise diminished further when arthritis in my hips and a herniated disc forced me to stop running. Still, she enjoyed getting out every chance she got, and didn’t seem to mind that I’d gotten even slower. We started taking more short walks to compensate. Clover liked to leave pee mail for other dogs, and sniff the messages they’d left.

In her older age, Clover was content to trot ahead and stay mainly on the trail, and she stayed in sight more often than not. She found joy in running, smelling the wild scents and rolling on the ground. She showed it with the burst of speed from the car, the wag of her tail, and the cant of her head when she’d stop to look back, as if to say, “Come on, hurry up! This is great!”

I would have mistaken these bugs for seeds, if I noticed them at all. My dear and observant friend Lisa spotted them during a leisurely ride along the Mason-Greenville rail trail last weekend.

Can you identify this tiny insect?

She waved a hand gently in the air, as if brushing off invisible cobwebs, and coaxed one of the tiny critters to light upon her. Up close, they were beautiful. The thorax was an iridescent purple, the wings translucent. The wings were about the size of a common mosquito’s, but much more delicate and with a straighter leading edge, for an asymetric shape. The back end, or abdomen, was a tuft of snow-white fluff… tiny, yet the largest and most visible part of the bitty bugs by far.

Once Lisa spotted that one, and pointed them out, they seemed to be everywhere, drifting around like miniature milkweed seeds. I don’t recall ever noticing them before. If any entomologist out there can identify it, I’d be curious to know what they are. 

For those who don’t know, the nine-mile unpaved rail trail is a terrific place to ride a hybrid or mountain bike, and Clover enjoys romping along there, too. There’s limited parking at the intersection of Pratt Pond Road, along Pratt Pond in Wilton. Watch out for horse droppings, and this time of year, wear some orange.

Akiko Busch lives along the Hudson River, herself, and she will speak about the themes she covered in her last book, “Nine Ways to Cross a River,” a collection of essays. See the press release below for details, and check out this NY Times piece for a splash of her work. 

The NRWA also plans a free workshop on sustainable, local-based economy and  development later that month…. keep scrolling on down for info.

I can vouch that the Nashua River is a fine place to swim, when it’s hot enough to tempt you (it’s been way too cold for quite a while now). There are some fun rope swings here and there, and the water is a lot cleaner than it smells.  

“Author Akiko Busch

to Speak at NRWA Annual Meeting”

 The Nashua River Watershed Association (NRWA) is pleased to announce that author Akiko Busch will be the keynote speaker at its 2008 Annual Meeting on Friday, November 7^th, at the Devens Common Center in Devens, Massachusetts.  Ms. Busch will speak on the topic “Nine Ways to Cross a River: Midstream Reflections on Swimming and Getting There from Here.”         

 Akiko Busch has written about design, culture, and the natural world since 1979. She is the author of Geography of Home: Writings on Where We Live and The Uncommon Life of Common Objects:  Essays on Design and the Everyday. Her most recent book of essays, Nine Ways to Cross a River, a collection of essays about swimming across American rivers, was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury/USA. She was a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine for 20 years, and her essays have appeared in numerous national magazines and exhibition catalogues. She has taught at the University of Hartford and Bennington College, and has appeared on public radio in the U.S. and Canada. Currently, she is a regular contributor to the New York Times Sunday regional section.  She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and two sons.

 The NRWA will also present its annual awards during the evening’s program. The NRWA 2008 Land and Water Conservation Award will be given to Jim French of Sterling, MA.  The NRWA 2008 Environmental Education Award recipient is Pete Lanza of Leominster, MA.  The Association’s Watershed and River Club corporate members will also be recognized.       

The NRWA event on November 7^th begins at 6:00 p.m. with a reception and corporate member recognition at 6:45.  Dinner will be served at 7:00 p.m., followed by the business meeting, NRWA annual awards, and the keynote speaker at 7:30. The cost to attend dinner is $60.00; reservations are required for dinner.  The business portion of the Annual Meeting, beginning at 7:30, is free of charge. The public is welcome to attend.  For reservations and information, call the NRWA at (978) 448-0299, or visit www.NashuaRiverWatershed.org.

Sustainable development workshop:

The Nashua River Watershed Association (NRWA) and the Groton and Harvard Locals are       co-sponsoring a free workshop over two evenings in November on smart development and sustainability principles in light of the challenges of natural resource depletion, constraints to water supply and agricultural lands, and increasingly difficult economic conditions. The need to move towards a more sustainable, locally-based economy in harmony with ecological realities will be the guiding principle of this two evening workshop.

The Smart Development and Sustainability Summit will take place on Wednesday, November 12 and Thursday, November 13, from 7:00 – 9:15 PM, at the Nashua River Watershed Association’s River Resource Center at 592 Main Street (Route 119), Groton, Massachusetts.  It is free and open to the public.   

The workshop presenters for the first evening include Mark Archambault, Smart Growth Circuit Rider at the Nashua River Watershed Association, who will present an update on peak oil and the  economic, resource depletion and environmental challenges facing sustainability efforts, and Chris Ryan, Planning Director for the Town of Ayer, who will speak on what planning for relocalization actually entails. On the second evening, Catherine Miller, Principal Planner at the Pioneer Valley Regional Planning Commission, will speak on the Pioneer Valley Sustainability Network, and Neil Angus, Planner at the Devens Enterprise Commission, will speak on the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) program and recent sustainable development practices being put into place at Devens.

This workshop should be especially useful to members of Planning Boards, Conservation Commissions, Boards of Selectmen, and members of the local sustainability community. The general public is encouraged to attend.

The Nashua River Watershed Association is able to sponsor this free and open to the public presentation due to the award of an EPA Targeted Watershed Grant entitled: “Protecting Today’s Water for Tomorrow, Combating Threats to Source Water in the Squannacook and Nissitissit sub-basins of the Nashua River Watershed.”

Registration in advance is requested.  To register or for further information, please contact Mark Archambault, NRWA Smart Growth Circuit Rider, at (978) 448-0299, or email MarkA@NashuaRiverWatershed.org.

            The NRWA event on November 7^th begins at 6:00 p.m. with a reception and corporate member recognition at 6:45.  Dinner will be served at 7:00 p.m., followed by the business meeting, NRWA annual awards, and the keynote speaker at 7:30. The cost to attend dinner is $60.00; reservations are required for dinner.  The business portion of the Annual Meeting, beginning at 7:30, is free of charge. The public is welcome to attend.  For reservations and information, call the NRWA at (978) 448-0299, or visit www.NashuaRiverWatershed.org.

For what it’s worth, Off Track endorses Green Party candidates Cynthia McKinny and Rosa Clemente for President and VP of the United States. I believe the Greens best represent the values that I hold dear: that all life has value (not just the wealthiest humans), and that sensible social policies begin by considering what’s best for the whole planet. That said, I won’t actually vote for them. Not this time. The stakes are too high.

]]> http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/offtrack/2008/10/19/mckinny-or-someone-like-her-for-president/feed/ http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/offtrack/2008/10/18/wheels-on-the-bike-go-round-and-round/ http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/offtrack/2008/10/18/wheels-on-the-bike-go-round-and-round/#comments Sat, 18 Oct 2008 22:43:43 +0000 andrew wolfe http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/offtrack/?p=354

The Vector Comp wheels that came with my road bike (a 2000 model Klein) served me well, so far as I can tell. They rolled round and stayed true for several years, without professional help.

Time conquers all, alas, and my wheels were no exception. The rear hub flange cracked last weekend, apparently due to some unusual lateral force during a mishap I won’t bother to describe, except to say that I wasn’t hurt too badly, and it was my own damn fault.

An inquiry to Trek (which made the wheels) revealed there was no hope of warranty, so I phoned local bike shops, poked around online and settled on a set of Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels that I got for well below retail. Goodales was good enough to hook me up with a quick (no appt. necessary) cassette swap, and I was good to go. I may never learn to pronounce “Ksyrium,” though, so don’t ask.

You can pay an awful lot for wheels, if you want. No doubt the expensive ones are worth it for some riders. I lusted after a $1,000 set for a while, but that’s just nuts for a recreational rider. Even so, I shelled out more for my wheels than some people pay for a whole bike. After one ride, I’m happy to say the cash was well spent.

I realize there’s a huge placebo effect with new gear, and I admit that what I know about the physics and mechanics of bicycling might not fill a teaspoon, but I think my new wheels are faster. The bike seemed to accelerate even more enthusiastically, and I think I noticed a difference on flats and gentler climbs. I can’t honestly say I noticed any difference on descents or steeper climbs. The only thing I can say with near absolute certainty is that the Mavics are much stiffer than my stock wheels. The ride is harsher; I felt every little crack or pebble in the asphalt.

I can live with that. I figure that stiffer wheels must transfer energy more efficiently from the drive train to where the rubber hits the road. If I’m right about that, then they must be faster. As for handling, I don’t think I can tell a difference, unless it’s for the worse. I believe that’s because I rotated my tires, though. A worn, flattened front tire isn’t going to roll into a turn as smoothly as a fresh round one, no matter how much they cost.

Now, speaking of wheels going round and round, Evan, Steve, Sheila and I went and saw Jonathan Richman last night at the Somerville Theater. (Jonathan’s ouvre includes a cover of “Wheels on the Bus,” for those who missed that segue). I have loved his music for years, but hadn’t kept current. He is still making beautiful music, and it’s still sentimental and silly and full of wonder and appreciation for all that this world has to offer. I feel better for having heard and seen him, and what more can one ask?

]]> http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/offtrack/2008/10/18/wheels-on-the-bike-go-round-and-round/feed/ http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/offtrack/2008/10/17/across-new-hampshire-sideways/ http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/offtrack/2008/10/17/across-new-hampshire-sideways/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:48:07 +0000 andrew wolfe http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/offtrack/?p=347 What are you doing this weekend?

It’s supposed to be pretty nice out: cool and sunny, with the maple trees bursting red, gold and orange… a classic New England autumn, and perfect running weather.

My aulde acquaintance “Sherpa” John Lacroix and his pat Nate Sanel are going to run sideways across New Hampshire, from Chesterfield to Rye, a 124 mile run. They plan to take it relatively easy (excepting it’s 124 miles, and they plan to run the whole way, pretty much non-stop), and raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation while they’re at it. You can donate, and read all about it on the event blog.

If you fancy a more sensible run, I recommend the Groton Town Forest race on Sunday.

Personally, I plan a very little bit of yard work, and hope to get out on my road bike to try out a new set of wheels. Have a good one, whatever you do.

Casual joggers (not to mention those who don’t run at all) might think marathoners are nuts.

People accustomed to road running can occasionally be seen leaving trail races, muttering and shaking their heads. Runners who have completed a few marathons begin to look in awe and envy at ultra-runners, who pick off 50 or 100 miles at a pop.

Then there’s people like Karl Meltzer, a New Hampshire native, who recently became the fourth-fastest man to complete the 2,174-mile Appalachian Trail, with a 51-day finish and Jennifer Davis of Asheville, NC, the fastest female to date. Meltzer is a professional ultra-runner, and his sponsor set up a blog to track his progress.

The current AT speed record of 47 days is held by another NH native, Andrew Thompson, as my Telegraph colleagues reported a few years back, and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear if my old pal Sherpa John takes a whack at it one day, either.

They are all absolute lunatics, and I say that with the utmost envy and respect.