So people keep asking, do I still go to Lighthouse Field, even after the whole court thing?

As a matter of fact, was out there yesterday morning. Seemed like a safe bet, was raining, no one should be out there, right? Go let the dogs run around in the rain, like we always do when it rains. Always did. Wet and unpleasant and cold and muddy and usually, no one else there except for maybe one other nutcase, parka all a-flap, and their dogs. The team speeds through the grass, over the logs, through the bushes and across the mudhole ponds. While I try to keep my feet out of giant puddles and mud patches. Greased up with silty rain water, black dogs look like little missiles with nothing to hit, just sizzling around and around until I call them in. Plenty of room for dogs to get some speed out there and do some running when everybody else stays inside.

Everybody else except a Ranger. In the rain, that would be my friend, driving around a giant white 4wd truck. Slow driving, lights on. Big, heavy, foilage crunching tires. On their new truck roads where there used to be meadows. Maybe looking for campers. Maybe looking for dogs. Whatever they are getting paid to look for, spend a lot of time doing it. The sight of that behemoth vehicle, rolling my way, sends big icy stab of hate through me for the place I used to cross my heart hope to die Love. My whole reason for living where I do. Yeah, I can still go down to the beach, when there is one. Winter tides sometimes leave no beach for months on end. Rangers staying out of our hair there. But the field. This 33 acres of dead grass and bushes and old fallen cypress that I know so well, from visiting every single day, no more. Unless I want to blatantly get my behind another ticket.

Sitting next to a lying cop in court seems to have changed my perspective on walking around out there all ballsy and blatant. Don’t want to go through that whole “I am a Crimnal” thing again if I don’t have to. Some kind of activist I turned out to be. I just want to let my dogs run around and get tired and wet before having to spend the day huddled together in a plastic box on a cold and rainy deck watching me walk by with muddy horses and listening to my shreiky voice holler on and on about outside rein. Not have to be secret squirrel, agent with a dangerous mission, crouching behind bushes, peering out to see if they drive on. Is a little thing. A little part of my big day. I go do something else for 8 hours, then something else then I’m at home and no good reasons that this 45 minutes of my day should be making me so crazycakes. Plenty of other big picture, big ticket items could be jammed up this craw, trust me on that.

Uh, so I guess the answer would be, yeah, I still go out there. Cautiously, paranoidly, like a hunchy old, shifty eyed, creeper. Peer out from the tall grass, unclip those leashes, let ’em rip. For a little bit. Then fasten them back up, and hustle off to buffalo before the Bright White Dodge Ram Mega Cab Count on It hisses in through a vapor in the not so far off distance and sails up to make my day.