Daisy the dog and I were out on a midmorning backcountry adventure.

The place we were exploring was an overgrown chunk of long-fallow farmland not too far from Caesar Creek Lake—tangled acres I’ve poked through on more than a few occasions during the past decades.

My wife and I recently adopted Daisy through the folks at Dream4pets, a Miami County volunteer dog rescue organization. It didn’t take us long to realize this rather impromptu decision had turned out to be one of the best commitments we’ve ever made.

Dogs have a way of changing your perspective and life.

While we knew, going in, that Daisy needed a home—we didn’t realize how much we needed this delightful dog! Making Daisy a part of our family has already enriched our lives immeasurably in many ways—some expected, others unforeseen.

One of those serendipitous blessings comes from the necessary responsibility of daily walks. Daisy is a guesstimated two years old—a fifty-pound bundle of puppyish play and boundless enthusiasm.

Walks are the key to temporarily ameliorating a portion of her apparently inexhaustible energy.

Since I work from home and can adapt my schedule to suit whim and fancy, I’m the primary dog walker. Unless it’s pouring rain, Daisy and I try and spend at least an hour afield every day.

Much of the time we traipse some tidy trail in a local park. But as the weather steadily improves, I’ve begun heeding my natural gravitational disposition toward investigating paths and places more wild and untrammeled.

At least once or twice each week we’ll drive an hour or so to ramble a woods or chunk of more open reclaimed land that’s blessedly lacking even a hint of neatly manicured walkways and color-coded signage. Several don’t even boast what you might call a legitimate parking lot.

These preferred destinations include sprawling tracts of woods and fields, stream corridors, lakeshores, and similar public holdings. In addition, there are a few old farms and woodlots, one bog, and a pretty big prairie—fallow, abandoned, back-in, and largely overlooked or downright forgotten private landholdings where I have open permission to trespass.

This sort of generally unkempt acreage is ideally suited to our wandering needs—their chief criteria being: “the bigger and wilder the better!”

There may still be a narrow trail or overgrown path wending about, but most will not get trodden by a day hiker or forager more than a time or two each month. I’m willing to bet on a few we’ve already walked, ours were this season’s first footprints.

Not wilderness by any definition—but as wild as I can manage within the confines of pre-walk drive time, which has currently maxed at approximately 90 minutes from home, but will doubtless expand in the weeks ahead.

These are the sort of places I find most appealing. And so does Daisy! Her amalgamated lineage appears to be skewed heavily to the hound side of the canine tree. She digs and probes, snuffs, snorts, and sniffs, wiggling and wagging her whole body as she dashes hither and yon, trying to savor everything olfactorily.

Watching Daisy sweep about is seeing the perfect picture of a nose-processing pooch in paradise!

On our most recent far-flung adventure, a flash of purple in a weedpatch at the brow of a little hill caught my eye. Curious, I signaled Daisy and we sauntered up to investigate.

At the top of the slope, the land flattened out. I saw an old meadow long gone to seed—a field now dotted with a scattered mix of mature trees and scrub cedar.

I also discovered the purple color came from a big clump of iris.

Iris? Up here? How? Why? Wasn’t it a bit early for them to be blooming?

I noticed a second similar clump a few yards away, buried amidst the broken stems of last year’s teasel and goldenrod. And then realized there were purple bloom clusters tucked unobtrusively throughout the thick cover.

I knew those iris weren’t there by chance.

Daisy and I began walking around looking for clues. And in just a few minutes, we had the answer—though there wasn’t much left there amongst the stubby springtime weeds. Just bits of bricks and a few cut stones, some rotting timbers, and several small pieces of rusty metal.

Time and weather had obliterated everything else. Still, someone had once called this hilltop home—and for whatever reason, they’d planted those clumps of iris everywhere.

There was a story here. Was it the familiar sad tale of hard winters, lost crops, and going broke? A leaving precipitated by sickness or death? Or did those long-ago residents just one day decide to pick up and vacate this sunny Ohio hilltop for dreams of a better life elsewhere?

I’d like to know that story…though I never will. And maybe it’s better remaining a mystery.

The old and the new. Hilltop iris and a dog named Daisy.

Reach Jim McGuire at [email protected].