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Woof Woof Tammy
Friday, June 8 2012
This morning Gretchen made a breakfast of fermented-dough waffles, Tofurky sausage, sourdough toast, and a number of other things. I also made coffee, since to fail to do so constitutes host malpractice (something I've actually experienced). At some point Aaron showed us some videoclips he'd created for the Dave Matthews Band. The clips are designed to be played on the screen behind the band and are synchronized to the music. Jessika had contributed to the clips by designing papier-mâché masks for some of the people appearing in these clips. It turned out that Jessika and Aaron would be going up to Saratoga this evening to see a DMB show in which their clips would be played.
[REDACTED]
After breakfast, we took another walk in the woods. Jessika being Jessika, she was a little slow out of the gate, and so Gretchen, who had a dental appointment this afternoon, could only join us for part of the walk. Some distance down the Gullies Trail, we were also joined by those two dogs we'd met a couple weeks ago at the bluestone quarry. The large white German-Shepherd-style dog, the one who had been overly-protective of the baby on the ATV, was leery of us and didn't stay long, but the other, older chunkier dog stuck with us for the whole walk. We went around the "Canary Peak" with its overlook of the Esopus Valley corn fields. Then on on the return part of our loop, the dogs started barking, so I ran to see what it was. It turned out to be a smallish bear without a convenient tree to climb. Jessika ran up to try to get a look, but the bear slipped off and ran down the hill before she could see it. Eleanor and our Ramona gave chase, but the bear quickly vanished into the Valley of the Beasts.
Our walk today, which was clockwise along the trajectory indicated by lots of tiny brown arrows. The biohazard symbol shows where we encountered the bear (on the return leg of that loop). The "Valley of the Beasts" runs the length of the center of the southern half of today's loop. Light green represents land owned by Catskill State Park.
On the walk today, coming up out of the Valley of the Beasts. From back to front: Aaron, Eleanor, Jessika, Charlottesville Ramona, Woof Woof Tammy, and Edgar. (My Ramona must have been leading our pack.)
Gretchen returned from her dental appointment soon after we returned from our walk. That mystery dog was still in our yard, so Gretchen decided to call the phone number on her tag. In so doing, she learned that the dog had the unfortunate name of Woof Woof Tammy. We all deduced that she had origins in South Carolina. The dog-returning service gave us Tammy's owner's phone number, and soon enough the owner (who lives at the end of Reichel Road) came to pick her up. In the course of our banter with the owner (who has lived in the area since the 1970s), we learned the following things:
- The abandoned hotel at "the quarry" is older than the quarry itself.
- The quarry dates only to the 1970s and "looked like Afghanistan" when it was in operation.
- There is a more spectacular falls than Canary falls, though it is further to the northwest, nearer to Lapla Road.
- There is an older, more spectacular quarry, also further to the northwest, nearer to Lapla Road. It was used mostly to supply stone during the creation of the Ashokan Reservoir.
- Woof Woof Tammy mostly goes by "Woof." She is a rescue from South Carolina and has an arthritic right leg after having been shot by an asshole with a shotgun. Why does it seem that the fruits of the second amendment are more often rotten than not?
Eventually Jessika and Aaron drove off to Saratoga, leaving me with all of the dogs. Meanwhile Gretchen went off on a number of errands, eventually picking up Sarah the vegan from the bus station. She would be spending the weekend with us.
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