ch. 3, v.121-157

(If you look in the lower left-hand corner of the picture,
you'll see me and Len posed to provide some scale.)

This day my companion you have chosen a path of greater wisdom.
You neglect not the inheritance of homo sapiens,
The abundant grey matter that crafts numberless tools from the rawness of the earth,
The accumulated wealth of experiments trials and errors
Until with the ease and swiftness of a vast herd of horses
We may travel this mountain from its foot to its crown
Conquering in the space of one brief nap the ascent that before
Consumed of us many hours and much labor.




(Do you then ask of me what goodness we find in our daily perambulations?
Should we not quickly upon wheels of mineral and sap advance each morn to our destination?
Nay, this question is foolishness, for the destination you imagine is no purpose
But only a point in the compass of the pack's knowledge.
For we traverse the ground upon our paws to know its smells and its sights
To trace the history of other packs as they have followed this path
And to know if they are good to avoid, good to meet in fellowship,
Or good to chase and growl upon.
In the grasses and the sod of our quartering, accident may bring unto us
Rich odors erstwhile uknown--for in other wilderness have we not discovered
The droppings of large hoofed hinds or small canines who are our cousins?
Therein we enlarge the territory of our mind.)

So my companion I offer my praise for this ascent and for this walk it allows unto us.

Oh for this here is a wondrous confluence of condensation and suspension
That makes the atmosphere all about us as a cooling bath.
Yea, tho' we tread the sharpened edge of the earth's incisor
Several hundreds of rods above the vast salted water of our home
Towering even above the broad valleys whose roads we traveled only this forenoon,
All is hidden now from us in this curtain of moisture.







Tho' the heat of the sun could parch and again weaken us
Yet these mists caress and protect us
So dense that even should a pack of fogdogs come to walk with us ,
Letting us to see with our eyes the territory below
Allowing the sun in gentleness to warm the furless hide of humans
Doubt not that it is a righteous place for your canine companions--




See upon the very pinnacle of the summit of the mountain of mansfield
This cooling and murky pool
In it I shall have my bath taking unto my coat its good water
And anointing it also with my water, the mark of Frida.



Exegesis and Commentary

ch.3, v.20-40 (journey to mansfield)

Our journey passes many hours upon broad and open paths
there moving with a great swiftness,
Yea, greater even than the swiftness of young and hungry whippets,
'till we enter upon winding paths climbing upwards into the forest
where the stony path ceases and crosses the gate of underhill.
On the evening slope of the mountain we arrive.



Behold Karen Who Is Tall has preceded us here
and in the shaded grove there has pitched for us a good tent.
A table and rock hearth will serve for their board
and thereunto the humans unload bountiful provisions.



Evening creeps upon our camp.
My companion and the Good Man Len make from sticks and logs
fire that presses back the cool air of night
and sends the wondrous incense of sausage up unto the clear sky.
It pleases our muzzles, and although we deign not to fill our bellies with kibble,
we neither forbear the begging that attains our portion of sausage.

The sleeping place of the tent is good.
There my companion's feet are close upon one side,
and close upon another, the warming wool of poodle.
My pack all about me makes the night safe
and sweet with the fragrance of our many bodies.



Exegesis and Commentary
My apologies to the followers of Frida for such a long hiatus in the transcription of her book, especially as it came in the middle of the relation of this journey. As you will see later in this chapter, although the journey begins with a well-pleased canine, she encounters a painful trial, and I think the translation of that has proven more difficult than usual. Anyway, for now here is the satisfaction of the camp in the woods, all good with sausages and close sleeping quarters in the tent.

ch. 3, v.1-19 (journey to mansfield)

In the exhaustion days of summer
we walk our fields and nap in our den
but we are pressed down by sadness
for Karen Who Is Tall is distant from us
now as many weeks as a dog has toes.
(She searches out the egging places of unmeaty frogs
and asks questions of their egg-encased puppies
that rest upon leaves.)

Huzzah a day comes
and she returns unto us.
We dance about her in ecstatic circles.
In celebration we carry in our mouths
small and furry objects plump with stuffing.

But, woe, with a day and another day, she departs again.
In anguish we rend our small and furry objects,
we scatter their stuffing about.
Leavings for leavings.






What happens now, my companion?
She harvests a bounty of fine provisions
and the good man Len comes to us
with his strong and capacious carriage.
We too depart from our den.

Exegesis and commentary
Frida's unusual sense of time is especially apparent in this verse of the book--her sense of how long Karen has been gone, how "now" is a constant. I'm not sure how those two things work together, but for her they seem too. Life has a past, of course, and a future--although she may normally experience that as anxiety ("what will happen to me if you leave" kind of thing), but everything is a day. (Okay, I cheated a little with the weeks as dog toes--it may actually have been more like "days in as many cycles as a dog has toes"--a more complex equation than it is expedient to express in our understanding.)

I also thought I might have been stretching it with the idea that Frida could understand what Karen is doing when she is away in the field, but here's the strange insight of the summer's events: just days before Karen's return, Nadja had her annual day at the salon in Brookline and came home with this bandana on:



Karen's frogs. So maybe the dogs do know.