When I took my dog hiking over spring break, I never thought I would end up with a likeness to an ogre. White teeth flashing against the mud and wet of my skin, I would bare my incisors like a dog and growl at any passerby. Needless to say, the trek out of the woods and back to my car, fat dog tucked like a four-limbed football under my arm, was not one I was particularly proud of.

It was a magnificent day in late March. It was the kind of day in which the world was finally beginning to loosen up and relax after the chilled iron grip of winter. Spring break was the perfect time to cultivate a renewed appreciation of the natural world. My class had been studying transcendentalist authors in English before we let out for the break, and I decided to partially follow in their footsteps. Writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson had spent time composing about nature and its beauties. They found fulfillment in the wilderness, sucking the marrow of life as they explored the wonders of the human mind and self-discovery. I had a mind to emulate their determination and resolve on such a fine day. But, as I laced up my boots and prepared to head out, my dad stopped me in my tracks.

“Take your beast!” he shouted. “He needs to get some exercise.”

With slightly narrowed eyes I turned my gaze to Gunnar, the obese beagle my father referred to, marinating in sunlight on my floor. Rolls of fat jiggled as he lifted his head to look at me. It was a ludicrous sight. After a staring match with his watery, adorable eyes for what felt like a lifetime, I sighed, conceding.

“Want to go for a ride?”

It was as if he was a pageant girl and I had just crowned him Miss America. Struggling to leap to his paws, Gunnar grunted and began to sprint around my house in a maelstrom of excitement, barking and whining like he could lose weight by expelling air. Grabbing his purple leash and walking harness from the oaken dining room table, I turned to face a whirlwind of pure exuberance barrelling toward me. I leaped on him and struggled to hold Gunnar's thirty-five pounds of joy and Jello-like muscles still so he could be wrangled into submission. The next thing I knew, we were in the family's white Prius, me driving and my daft companion strapped in his doggy car straight jacket, headed for destiny.

Upon arriving at the park, I let Gunnar out of the backseat and he immediately yanked me in four different directions. I somehow managed to shoulder my backpack and suggest through a few sharp tugs on the leash that Gunnar should begin to walk with me toward the trailhead. The lingering stress from school was a weight that began to lift off of my shoulders as we walked toward the woods. The damp, green scent of early spring is the best bath you could ever take. It is the feeling of cleanliness and clarity one feels after taking a late night shower and settling down for the evening. No matter how many times one may venture into the woods, this feeling never becomes trite. I did not mind that Gunnar pulled anymore--a dog needed to have fun. His semi-curled golden tail bounced along behind him as he sniffed every passing rock, tree, or stump, only moving forward as he realized I was leaving him behind. Whether it was out of loyalty or some sort of separation anxiety that he attempted to catch up to me, I do not know. All I knew was that I would follow this trail until it spat me out at the other end of the park.

Another thing I did not know was the massive population of squirrels in the park. Around every bend was a fluffy-tailed tyrant, puffed up and barking territorially from its precariously swaying roost on only the thinnest branches of the trees while its comrades rush through fallen leaves in search of a feast. They clearly believed they were surreptitious in their hiding and storing of food for the later seasons, yet they made a racket and were anything but stealthy. Amused, I would only spend a moment looking at them, indifferent to the extra tugging on the leash I had to do to change Gunnar’s course from the squirrel back to the trail.

Sweat beaded on my forehead and dripped down my back as the temperature rose with the sun. Gunnar began to wheeze from how hard he tried to charge forward at every squirrel, his stubby legs driving onward at an unrelenting rate and spurred by his innate predatory instincts.

We made our way down a steep ravine, me having to keep an extra tight hold on Gunnar’s leash to keep my footing. Soon, we reached the base of the slope and an anticlimactic conclusion to the trail.

“Dang it,” I muttered, refusing to believe my transcendental walk would be so truncated, “I guess we will have to turn back.”

I looked to Gunnar. Dim-witted chocolate-colored eyes stared back at me. I could not end now. I figured that if we kept hiking, he might even drop some weight.

“Want to keep going?”

His slimy pink tongue lolled back at me in response as he panted. With the way his mouth curved, it almost looked as if he smiled in return. I took it as a sign. I looked up at the daunting hill in front of me, even steeper and taller than the one I had just descended, and then up at the sky, where the sun began to hesitantly peek out from behind a passing cloud. My mind went back to English class and the transcendentalists. Emerson and Thoreau would tell me to march to the beat of my own drum--to follow my own path and tackle anything that comes in my way. I imagined they walked beside me through the woods and encouraged me onward.

I steered Gunnar in the direction of the hill.

The only time on record that I was grateful for my dog's incessant pulling was while we trekked up that small mountain. My muscles burned with the exertion of continuously moving on such a steep plane. Relief came only from my dog lightening my load, keeping me on pace and helping to drag me forward. My eyes burned as my forehead cried sweat into them, rivulets running down my face and off of my chin. At that moment, I decided I needed to make better use of my gym membership.

Fortunately, the struggle was worth it when we reached the top. This moment was one where I was forced to stop and take stock of my surroundings. I felt as if I could see everywhere. The sun glittered off of a pond in the distance. The wind brushed its fingers through the leaves of the trees. I felt unequivocally present in that moment at the park. My mind and body were cleared of the troubles that contaminate my every moment outside of that second of time. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes to relish in the heat of the sun in my face… something I only felt for an indeterminate amount of time before being jerked back to reality. Literally. My eyes opened to see the gray bush of a squirrel tail flashing around the corner of a tree--and Gunnar tearing after it. My feet scrabbled with inhuman speed to gain purchase on the muddy ground, but it was too late; I tumbled down the hill after my carnivorous beast.

I was completely out of control and intensely exasperated. The trees and undergrowth began to blur. Gunnar's golden-brown and round body flashed ahead of me intermittently as I crashed through bushes and attempted to regain a vertical state of body. Gunnar barked and grunted with the exertion of rocketing down the hill and dodging things in his path. The dog was fearless. Meanwhile, I narrowly avoided splitting my cranium on tree trunks, steadily maintained a chokehold on the purple leash, and continuously howled for Gunnar to "just stop, you filthy mongrel!"

We halted before I knew it. I felt the ground drop from beneath me and experienced cold and wet like I had never felt before. My eyes were firmly shut to keep out the dirt my face was planted in. I most definitely lay prostrate in a prime mud puddle. Water seeped from the ground and through my t-shirt and denim jeans. I shivered from the chill of being cloaked in a growing creek. Pushing up from the ground, I sat up slowly and wiped excess mud from my eyes. Gunnar, tail wagging and eyes dancing, sat before me. His expression gradually changed from unctuous to shameful as I stood up and he realized that I most certainly did not have as much fun as he did on that flight down the hill.

With a strength I did not know I possessed, I plucked Gunnar from the ground and tucked him under my arm. He went limp in my grasp. My hiking boots made a sucking sound when I pulled them from the mud and schlepped toward the park road and in the direction of the Prius. I had a permanent frown stuck on my face. What a sight we were to the park pedestrians we passed on the way to the car: me, a solemn seventeen-year-old girl soaked in mud and sweat, and Gunnar, a rather fleshy dog looking utterly defeated under my arm. The thought crossed my mind and I began to chuckle as I shoved Gunnar in the back of the car and climbed into the front seat, mud speckling the interior and causing my feet to slide around on the pedals.

I realized the day was not worth getting angry about; in fact, the story of my hike with Gunnar would end up being something I told at parties to gain a laugh. However, I believed I learned a lesson just as the transcendentalists did. Sometimes, being forced to descend from your perch was better than being at the top. I drove the rest of the way home muddy and content.

Consequently, the day in which I learned to embrace humility was also the day I learned how to thoroughly clean the interior of a car.