Generations

It was one of those deliciously perfect autumn days. Clear and mild. The sun shone upon the snow of the massifs of the high peaks in the countenance of finely polished ivory. The breeze, whilst crisp, wasn't biting, and helped to keep us comfortable.

Milarepa is five and a half years old now, but is still that spazzy little puppy I picked up from my parents' farm all those years ago. Whistler, four years younger than my daughter, makes it a point to prove he is the canine definition of active senior. In the view point of my own species I have started to enter into middle age, although, my two quadrupedal companions could be forgiven for thinking me immortal.

We only went as far as the third major water-crossing. I wanted to make sure Whistler could make it back without either needing to be carried or completely broken. He laid down in a grass patch at my feet. Chevy's home-sentencing arthritis first manifested after a fourteen mile round-trip walkabout a few years back. Milarepa frolicked in the snow. I watched them both and smiled at the sky.

I endeavor not to antropomorphize, finding it to be one of the more offensive forms of hubris. We are what we are; canid and primate, yet a definite bond exists between us. Maybe it could be called friendship. Perhaps it's something else entirely, which defies any language in any tongue, real or imagined. There's a possibility it doesn't matter.

In those nameless moments, sitting looking out at the sky and thirteen and fourteen-thousand foot peaks that surrounded us, sunning in the cool grass, frolicking in the snow, perhaps the triviality of the barrier of species melted away. It was kiss of divinity. In those nameless moments, we were all one and the same, equal and one.

And perhaps there's some sort of poetry in that...