THE FIRST HIKE WITHOUT HIM AND THE FIRST HIKE WITH HER

A Reflection on Returning to the Trail with Clover

I wasn’t sure I’d ever go back there again.

For months after Shamrock died, I couldn’t even look at the state park parking lot when I drove past it on my way to and from work.

I’d pass it twice a day, every day, and each time I felt the same sharp, sinking ache in my chest.

I used to pull into that lot full of excitement, knowing Shamrock and I were about to spend hours in the woods together.

After he was gone, all I could feel was the absence of that joy. It didn’t just hurt — it felt impossible to return.

Shamrock and I had spent years hiking there together.

We didn’t just walk the wide flat trails — we climbed the mountainsides, crossed streams, scrambled over rock, walked through waterfalls, and stood still in those deep, sacred pockets of silence only forests can make.

The woods were our place — our ritual — our peace.

And when he died, I felt like those trails belonged to a life I no longer had access to.

So when the day came that I quietly put on my hiking boots — without planning it, without announcing it — it surprised even me.

I walked outside, and Justin looked up from the yard and said, in a soft, questioning voice,

“You’re wearing your hiking boots…”

That was the moment I said it out loud for the first time:

“I’m taking Clover hiking.”

He said he’d like to come — but then suddenly had “yard work he needed to do.”

It wasn’t an excuse in the selfish sense — it was a gentle way of stepping back.

He understood, without me having to explain it, that this was something Clover and I needed to do alone.

I think we both knew that if he came, the energy would shift.

This wasn’t a shared outing.

It was a crossing.

And he let me make it without him.

So Clover and I drove up the mountain, and for the first time since losing Shamrock, I turned into the parking lot again.

It was quiet.

Familiar.

And I felt my throat tighten the second I put the car in park.

Clover hopped out full of curiosity, but not chaos.

I unclipped her leash, and instead of running into the trees like a wild thing, she just stood beside me — completely still — staring down the trail with me.

Like she was waiting for something inside me to settle first.

The tears came.

Not a breakdown — just quiet grief, the kind that knows it’s no longer raw, but will never be gone.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, took a slow breath, and finally said the words that moved us both forward:

“Okay… let’s go.”

And we did.

We didn’t climb the mountain slopes that Shamrock and I used to love.

We didn’t scramble boulders or cross the waterfalls.

Her joints aren’t ready for that yet — she still has growing to do, bones that haven’t fully fused, time left before her body can handle the kind of hiking Shamrock and I took for granted.

So instead, we walked the flatter paths — the ones that wound through open forest and soft earth — and it was enough.

Clover never wandered more than twenty feet ahead of me.

She kept turning around to check on me, watching my pace, adjusting her own.

Once, when my hip started aching badly and I had to stop and lean on a tree, she didn’t notice at first — but when she realized I wasn’t behind her anymore, she came running back.

Not playfully, not demanding, just with purpose — straight to me, like it was her job to close the distance.

Later, when I slowed again, she didn’t run back — she stopped ahead of me, turned, and sat, watching me catch up.

That’s not just training.

That’s instinct — the same one Shamrock had.

Stay close. Stay aware. Stay connected.

I sent Justin a few pictures as we walked.

Not to update him — but to let him witness the moment from afar.

I told him the hike was bittersweet — my first hike with Clover, but my first hike without Shamrock.

And he wrote back with something I’ll never forget:

“There’s a little part of him in her, and a little part of him in you too.

He’s there with you today because of those little parts.

I know he’s smiling down at you and her because she’s out there having a good time, and you’re back out there doing what you love — living in the moment.

So he is with you today.

You’re not without him, and you never will be again.”

He was right.

I didn’t go back to that trail despite Shamrock — I went back because of him.

I didn’t walk with a new dog to erase the old one — I walked with the new dog because the old one taught me how.

The woods didn’t feel empty after all.

They felt familiar — like a place that remembered us, and was willing to hold something new without letting go of what came before.

When we got home, Justin met us at the door.

He looked at me the way someone does when they already know the answer matters.

“How did it go?” he asked.

I didn’t answer right away.

I stood there for a moment, still holding the feeling of the woods, still holding the quiet of the trail inside me.

He must have seen the look in my face, because he asked gently,

“What’s wrong?”

And I shook my head and said,

“Nothing.

Something is right.

It felt wonderful being in the woods again — and having a wolfhound by my side on those trails.

It’s something I really thought I’d never experience again.”

And that was the truth.

It wasn’t just a good day.

It was a returned part of me.

-The picture is of Clover at the start of the trail.