My Home is a Truck

I’ve been on the road now for two weeks. My home is a Ford F-250 that my parents call Nzou, Shona for Elephant. That’s how big it is. I like it, but the motion sometimes gets to me. I’m glad I can curl up in my bed whenever I want.

 

And there’s a place for me on one of my Dad’s old jackets that’s right between my parents.

I’ve crossed the Continental Divide eight times.

I’ve smelled some strange things like elk, mountain goats, bison, cows, horses.

 

Yesterday, I smelled a grizzly sow and her cub, so that was something familiar. There was a crowd of vehicles and people around them. Too close. That wouldn’t happen back home in King Salmon where we know how to act around bears. I’m glad my Dad taught me.

 

 

 

The days are in the truck; the nights are in unknown rooms that smell like strange dogs and stranger people. I get breakfast and an outside and I’m in the truck while they get breakfast. We hit the road and sometime around dark we find a room. I get dinner and an outside and then I’m in my kennel while they have dinner. In between, anything can happen.

We slept outside once in Canada. It was cold and I wished we were home. It snowed the next morning and I had to stay in my kennel while my parents made breakfast because I kept wandering a little too far. There were so many interesting smells!

I like the taste of the fresh glacial rivers. Cold and clean.

Yesterday, everything smelled like sulfur. It was so volcanic that it wasn’t safe for me to walk outside!

The trees are different. Thicker, broader. The land is not flat, but looms at you like a sometimes icy monster.

Today, we’re in Wyoming, so there’s some flat land at last. I ran where the cows run and Dad said that I did a good job crossing the cattle guard gate. Like I was born to be out here.

Sometimes I dream about the tundra and its damp mossy cinnamon pine cranberry labrador tea smells. Will I ever smell them again?