Finding adventure in stalking a backyard shrew

Sometime just before dinner, Winchester spotted a shrew in the yard. It had run along the fence and darted into a hole at the edge of the shed. I would not have seen it if it weren't for Winchester's reaction — the movement at the corner of his eye spun him around. It is his habit to point birds, and this tendency has stalled his tactics when it comes to a less polite creature than a grouse. A shrew will not hold still like a game bird when discovered. With a heart that beats 700 times a minute, the best defense is to run and hide. The gift of the shrew is daring speed and stinky smallness.

Winchester gazed at the hole where the shrew had disappeared. I watched from the kitchen window as he sat down as if to watch a favorite movie. And, that's what he did for the next few hours. After dinner, Steve mentioned Winchester was still in the yard waiting for the shrew. "That can't be right," I said. But, I looked out the kitchen window to see Winchester still sitting at the corner of the shed.

While we attended to other business around the house, Cogswell, another of the setters, caught on to the more pressing issue in the yard. He joined Winchester. If they were hunting birds together, what he did next would be called "honoring a point." But, they weren't pointing birds. They were sitting in front of the hole by the shed. Later on, Boss, another of the setters, joined them. Three bird dogs in a row.

There is no doubt in my mind that time spent in the mountains is better than time in the yard. The effort to get there enhances the beauty, almost as if it is a reward — would it be as beautiful to view out the kitchen window as it is to earn the view? The mountain is home to the creatures that go to sleep there, and that may be an obvious, if not sometimes forgotten fact. More often, we visit mountains as if they have visiting hours. When the conditions are most advantageous, we go, and a few of us stay and enjoy them at night or through the wind and rain.

When we go to the mountains, so often it is for escape. Or, we tell ourselves it is also to reconnect, to recover. We go "out" to go further in, perhaps. It is the larger world that makes us feel small. It is the landscape that does not impose a routine on us as exists at the home or workplace. The adventure is in how we regard the living mountain as being pure and natural and "other." It is outside. It is not home and garden.

Winchester was still in the yard at close to midnight hunting a shrew that sought the greater safety of the indoors, perhaps for the season. It may have traveled through the shed and out the other side, yet Winchester waited. Boss gave up after five minutes, and Cogsy appeared more interested in figuring out what Winchester was doing if only for an hour. Winchester, who had been at it for five hours, sat steady and focused. He reminded me of a sheep hunter on a long stalk, searching for those resources deep within that push him beyond what he thought was possible.

This adventure was of his own making and different than the plans we make for him. Hunting a shrew was pure instinct, but his dedication showed charisma. Instead of focusing on one thing called "adventure" — out there, somewhere — Winchester found it in the yard, where I could never find it. As much as a part of me wanted him to come in for the night, a bigger part of me was in awe.

A few days later, four of us headed to the mountains to hunt ptarmigan. Hugo, one of the younger setters, prefers to wait for designated adventures. He is typical of his breed — an athlete in the field and an aristocrat in the house. He runs 20 miles if we are on the mountain, but he won't clock a mile a day in the yard, and maybe just a few on a walk. The other dogs manage to get in their steps for the day. But Hugo saves his up, and he was shaking with excitement in the backseat of the truck. Winchester, older by four years, slept on the drive.

They both raced up the sides of the valleys, the feathers on their tails and legs backlit by the sunrise. They crisscrossed each other in graceful loops. Their ability to run so wide-open put my level of physical ability to shame. Everywhere I looked, the mountain was on fire with the colors of fall. The autumn palette looks best on a mountain where the spattering of yellow alders, bright against the juniper, gives way to blankets of red bearberries and, then, the dew-bright lichens reflect light as the setters run toward the top.

Every second of sunrise paints a new world.

At the end of the day, the two dogs were as different as they started no matter how similar they were as they hunted. Hugo curled up in a dog bed to sleep until the next adventure. And, Winchester, because he is a dog like I have never encountered or because he's getting old and must get in a fuller day than the rest of us, took his post at the edge of the shed. It was the fourth night in a row. The shrew may no longer be alive, but his sense of commitment was not dead.

"Winchester is on shrew watch again," Steve said with admiration. For him, adventure was not saved for an occasion; it lived within.

It was 10:45 p.m. the last time I got up to check. Cogswell saw me at the window and broke his focus. He ran to the house as if to say, thank you for saving me from this nonsense. I was done with it anyway. And Winchester did not move. I went to bed because I work in the morning, but I stayed awake to marvel at Winchester's tenacity and ability to find adventure on the mountain as much as in everyday things.

Christine Cunningham of Kenai is a lifelong Alaskan and avid hunter. Contact her at cunningham@ yogaforduckhunters.com.