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Three people, including Emily Mooney, study alpine plants on a hillside in the mountains near Fairplay, Colorado.

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CMarie and her 17-year-old dog, Carhartt, camp together for the last time. Next to the stream, CMarie remembers all the other times she and Carhartt have camped together, lain in sunshine together, and splashed through rivers together. In nature with dogs, their senses expand our own.

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This episode takes place on Nimiipuu and Shoshone Bannock homelands.

Host and Writer: CMarie Fuhrman Field Recordist: Jacob Job Outdoor audio recorded in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado Editor: Erin Jones Producers: Rebekah Romberg, Kibwe Cooper Engineer: Luis Antonio Perez Art: Maria Juliana Pinzón Executive Producer: Brad Turner Additional Editorial Support: Jo Erickson, Emily Williams Thanks also to Jodi Gersh, Clara Shelton, Arielle Wilson, Brittany Werges, Martin Skavish, Justin Peacock and Jon Pinnow

Terra Firma is a production of Colorado Public Radio's Audio Innovations Studio.

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This time to the woods of west central Idaho

My 17-year-old dog Carhartt and I settle into camp at the edge of a creek high in the Salmon River Mountains of Idaho. [Continual sound of stream running smoothly and steadily] Though she is deaf, I want her to be near the sound of moving water. To be at the edge of the seam where earth and water meet. To be able to walk into the gentle and shallow flow, lie against the smooth cobble bottom, and let the grace of water lift and cool her.

I place the tent beneath a family of tall lodgepole. And though their crowns are high and seem to bend to look down upon us, a break in the canopy and the screen roof of our tent will open the night to stars [gentle sound of creek running, occasional bird song]. As the sun drops below the horizon and we to our beds, I pull the quilt around us and welcome the sound of memory [lapping water babbling against the shore].

I recall nights of falling asleep to rain on our tent. The song of coyote, of wolf. One night Carhartt and I lay on a ridgeline and listened to the call of a nightbird whose identity I will never know, but whose song was haunting and beautiful. Another night, another ridge, no tent, we fell asleep with the forest below us, the evening wind swaying treetops – a sound like the sea [pleasant chirping sounds juxtaposed over water running].

At another creek, not far from where we are now, I recall water that flowed clear as breath from beneath the granite bones of the mountain.Then it began a journey across the high meadow, following its pull toward the sea. We came upon the stream from above. The meadow and water were welcome on that mid-July day and Carhartt waded into the stream and lay down. As belly met cold water and stream bottom, her long tawny hair rose and swirled in the water.&nbsp;

We drank from the stream together. Me with my stomach on a bed of mountain heather, hers on cobble worn smooth from eons [water smoothly running, gentle but insistent]. Neither of our wildness was inhibited by collars or the names we wore. This was only one of a hundred or more times we shared wild waters, many times merely cooling, other days swimming the azure blue of an alpine lake. One of the countless times I would lie beside her on earth. I stared where she stared, my alertness perking with the tips of her ears catching some sound I could not hear, her nose working scents that spoke of wild passing I would know only by watching her.&nbsp;

And then there was her lope. Her paws to earth as the paws of her cousins and forebears were. The freedom of animal body bounding. And what else was it in that bound but joy? Joy as she ran ahead, pulled by some unseen force that pulled us both up trail. The want to explore, the love of feeling big in big country. My eyes ran with her across meadows, leapt every log she leapt, learned the freedom that wildness allows us. When Carhartt ran, I was twice alive.&nbsp;

[Water running] I spend all night remembering those moments with Carhartt, the creek and the lodgepole outside. Carhartt breathing steady beside me. In the morning, we wake together and watch a mule deer doe lope away from us through the sun-bright meadow of mountain buttercup. My dog’s old body, stiff with arthritis, tenses. But only her eyes follow as we step into one of our last mornings together.

The late cultural anthropologist, Richard Nelson, writes of his dog as a sensory prosthetic. It is true. Carhartt has allowed me to feel and know this landscape, this nature, in ways that alone I cannot. She doubles and extends my pleasure and my experience. Through her, my joy is twice felt, my senses twice ignited.&nbsp;

And for all the years of this gift she has given me, I will soon reciprocate with mercy.&nbsp;

In a few days, when we are home, when it is time, we will open our house and call in the wild sounds, even though she cannot hear them. Her eyes looking into mine, she will fall asleep with her nose working the mountain air, her body pressed to my own, my heart throbbing against hers stopping [water and bird sounds abruptly stop].&nbsp;

Then we will bury her in a handmade quilt, lay her on cool dirt, in a grave newly opened, scratched in the earth as she had scratched so many beds for herself before.&nbsp;

And after her death, I will spend whole days lying beside her grave, my hand seeking her fur on the stones that will cover her, my tears watering the mountain ash that shades her, together in the place we felt most alive.[Sounds of water slowly fade back in, filling the atmosphere] But it is not yet time. We still have this morning. And the Ruby Crowned Kinglet and Robin and Stellars Jay are laying the soundtrack for another memory. And despite the ache of age in her body, she leaves our shelter with the same joy she has every morning we’ve awakened in the woods. And I follow her down the trail that leads us through the stream and then together we lope as best we can into the waiting wildflowers [birds chirp, water runs, intermittent sounds of footfalls through water].

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Terra Firma is a podcast about the outdoors, the sounds of the natural world and our place in it. Each episode runs about 5-10 minutes and pairs reflections on nature with gorgeous soundscapes captured in wild places.

Terra Firma

CMarie and her 17-year-old dog, Carhartt, camp together for the last time.

Carhartt Creek (Payette National Forest, Idaho) | Colorado Public Radio

Carhartt Creek (Payette National Forest, Idaho)

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Carhartt Creek (Payette National Forest, Idaho)

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