I was thinking about Leonard Cohen sipping expensive scotch with Roshi at the Mount Baldy Zen Center, writing:

After listening to Mozart
(which I often did)
I would always 
Carry a piano
Up and down
Mt Baldy
And I don't mean
A keyboard
I mean a full-sized 
Grand piano
Made of cement
...

from "His Master's Voice"

And imagined that that was why I had trouble breathing, why my thighs and calves were screaming, why my hat was soaked with salty perspiration, why another thought crept into my strained consciousness: why am I doing this exactly? Why does it feel like I am lugging a grand piano up Register Ridge, the steepest trail to the summit of Mount Baldy? Like the sage in the poem, I don’t regret a single step, but I did feel every stride.

I was paying the price for the naive excitement with which I’d pushed all four cylinders of the Prius up the windy road to Manker Flats, feeling welcomed by row after row of Spanish broom lining the roadside, like cycling fans at the Tour de France all dressed in yellow; and the eagerness with which I’d opted out of the steep-but-not-as-steep ski hut trail. It was my first visit of the year to heights above six thousand feet and I couldn’t wait to dive in the deep end.

And then, after an hour of relentless climbing, dogs barked above me. Yes, dogs; two, maybe three of them further up the trail, from the sound of it. Dogs are not uncommon on backcountry mountain trails, but they are typically of the chill, well trained kind, and not barking, territorially at approaching hikers, and they are usually accompanied by humans. Not these guys. There was no one in sight, or within earshot. The barking eventually stopped; at the speed I was going, and from their vantage point, I couldn’t possibly present a threat. I spotted them, or at least two of them and a furry four-legged shape scurrying uphill as I approached. The two were posted under the shade of a solid jeffrey pine, one seated, the other on his belly, occupying a flat area blanketed with pine needles, just wide enough for them, right on the edge of a five hundred foot drop. Had they decided, or been ordered to, prevent my passage they couldn’t have picked a better spot. I got close enough to take note of their collars, which reassured me but also reinforced a daunting thought. What if the owner had slipped down that cliff they were perched on and was laying in the canyon floor below, injured, immobilized and unconscious? I’ve heard too many stories from rangers and search and rescue volunteers about hikers who get hurt or lost, generally because they do something stupid, to dismiss the possibility. Yet, I observed my canine ridge buddies and found them far too relaxed and weary of my presence to substantiate the accident theory. I now had a good look at them. They were of similar, average size, and similar features, they could have been brothers, but one was gray with wolf-like steel-blue eyes and the other a more generic sand color. Gray, or White Fang, got up and trotted down the ridge, between the trail, where I stood, and the precipice. He passed me as if I wasn’t there and parked himself some thirty feet below, on a rock, to gaze at, not me, but the stunning views of Baldy Notch, the three T’s and Ontario peak.

I wasn’t going to disturb such a zen moment so I put my hand out and took a couple of steps towards Sandy. That drew a growl and a warning show of teeth. I got the message: keep your distance. You stink. Or, I don’t know you, and how dare you disrupt our peaceful morning sortie? Go away! Fine. Be that way, I thought. See if I care, and I sidestepped up the trail keeping my eyes fully focused on Sandy’s stance. Not aggressive, but alert, like me just way quicker and with a more menacing jaw. And so we agreed to not become buddies after all. I trudged on and Sandy lazily joined White Fang in a quiet tableau of alpine harmony.