The day that Diesel dissapeared

I was laying in bed, it was getting late

I was finding it hard to pull myself out of bed, had a late night. The sleep was restful, but felt like it wasn’t long enough. Out of the blue, I heard my dad call, “Son, I lost Diesel, I’m going back to the lake to look for him.” I called back, okay, sure thing. And for a second, had a moment of egoic pleasure that I could lay there for an extra little while. Immediately afterwards, I felt a small tinge of guilt, here our dog had gone missing and I was glad to not feel the pressure of needing to get out of bed and be productive during the day. Regardless, a short minute later, I roused myself and got up and made myself some breakfast. Before long, my dad had returned and said he had no luck. He called my mom and gave her the bad news. I tried to stay optimistic, even though this dog hadn’t been the best behaved. He is a new addition, and has had two previous owners. My parents bought him at ten months, and for a dog, thats plenty of ‘development time’ or lack thereof, in other words, development time to have some bad habits. It seemed like the only people he really got along with were my parents. He barely tolerated me, always being on edge, growling and barking if I made any sudden movements towards him. I told my dad, he’s even less likely to listen to me. “I know” my dad replied. I said well are we going to go look for him? My dad said yes, but it was impossible to see his prints. I said I got to go to the bathroom and my dad sped off to the lake without me, leaving me to follow after I completed my business.
Turns out I didn’t have to go that bad, and decided I could take care of that later. I jumped on the snowmobile and carefully took the trail towards the lake. I hadn’t worn a helmet like I usually do, and the feeling of the open air and the wind in my hair was quite nice and refreshing. Getting to the lake, I saw my dad in the middle of it. I wasn’t sure if he saw me, because as soon as I hit the ice, he was taking off. The plan had been to look for the dog and if we couldn’t find him, my dad was going to go to the main road and start his truck because it had been a while since he had done that. “Nice looking, dad.” I thought to myself, although granted, he already had been long before I got out of bed.
I rode to the other side of the lake. My dad said that he had seen the dog near the ‘island,’ a tiny one in the middle of this lake before he had disappeared. I parked the snowmobile on this island and started walking around… making spirals and noticing that it was possible to see my own footsteps. But the feeling of being in that vast, open wild space. It really hits you… you feel almost inconsequential and the sheer vast expanse, the immensity of it dawns on you. I kinda understood why my dad wasn’t so keen to look, it seemed so daunting and impossible of a task, almost like finding a needle in a field of haystacks.
I kept walking, feeling my own tinyness amongst it all, when I happened to find paw prints in the snow. I thought to myself this could only be the dogs prints. I followed them to the edge of the lake, and the prints headed off into the forest. I followed them but the snow on the shore immediately halted my progress. You could maybe take a step but the next one, you’d be knee high in snow. I tried in vain to walk but knew it would be impossible without snowshoes. I turned and rode back to camp and grabbed my pair. Returning to the spot, I strapped them on and started following the trail. On and on the tracks went, and several times I mumbled to myself what a dumb dog… where was he trying to go? At one point, I even found myself with another pair of tracks. The other tracks were old, you could tell they had been made a while before because they were much more melted than the fresh dog prints. But it kind of seemed surreal or bizarre. They quite honestly startled me, it was like who… or even what had made these prints. It just didn’t seem logical to find a bipedal series of tracks in the middle of the forest, in the middle of nowhere where nobody comes during the Winter. I kinda laughed to myself as I thought ‘bigfoot’ or the sasquatch and continued following Diesels trail, deeper and deeper into the forest. My dad had said that he could likely become a snack for a pack of Wolves -
‘They would smell him better he could smell them.’ I followed the trail not knowing what I would find.
Eventually, the tracks stopped going deeper into the forest, but turned back towards the direction of the lake. Not exactly back the way he had came, but at least in the general direction of the lake. I kept following until I reached the shore, at which point, I honestly couldn’t figure out where the tracks lead. I’m sure that if I perservered, I would have been able to once again find the trail… but I walked out onto the frozen lake and called out for Diesel several times. He came crashing through the bush after several calls, and for once, seemed actually happy to see me. I was happy to have found him, but not entirely sure he would actually listen to me with his typical attitude of skepticism towards me. However, it turns out that he was quite happy to follow me after his little solo mission in the woods. Although he would still keep his distance away from me. But I could tell he was quite happy by the way he carried himself and so was I.
We had emerged at a different part of this lake. I started walking around and for a few minutes, I almost thought I was on a completely different lake or something. I wasn’t familiar with that part of it, and it seemed to keep going and going and going. I was worried I’d have to turn back, and retrace my steps all the way to my starting point. And that if I did, would the dog keep following me still? Regardless, I told myself it’s got to be the same lake… and was reassured by some faint snowmobile tracks on the slushy surface. I had been there a couple weeks before with the snowmobile. Eventually, after making my way around a narrow bend, I caught site of the island I had left the snowmobile at and made my way towards it.
At the island, I packed away my snowshoes and started the engine, ready to head back slowly. But I could tell the dog wanted to jump on the machine with me, so I stopped and beckoned him to jump on which he gladly did. It was a bit of an awkward ride back, steering with one hand and trying to give the dog a better purchase on the seat not meant for a dog. But he was happy and I was happy. I got back to camp and let him inside, and as a way of thanking me, he growled when I tried to come close and pet him. “Ah, theres the old Diesel I know.” Minutes later my dad came back and the dog was even more happy to see him. I explained where he was and my dad was very relieved.
The feeling of the vast expanse and of how badly one could get lost out there will stay for me for a while… I’ve had a brief glimpse of that in the past and was reminded, it’s always good to respect nature.