The temperature was in the mid-eighties yesterday, and after the 100-degree heat of the last week, it felt like a spring day. I had breakfast at a little diner that probably had calendars on the wall, but I forgot to check. The food was good, as much as any food is good these days, and I watched an elderly man across from me eat, then hobble to the cash register and out the door. He was taking steps of about six inches with a cane, and his cowboy hat sat squarely upon his head. Blue jeans and boots filled out the image, and I wondered what all he had experienced in his long life. Like my father, he has seen more change than any generation in history, and I admire people like my father who don’t lament that things have changed but marvel at them instead. By the time I had finished reading Whitman’s “Starting from Paumanok” and paid for my meal, he had only made it as far as his car, a forties-something model that was parked seemingly as far away as he could get it. I will look for him next time and see if he is interested in telling any stories.

I spent most of the rest of the day in my office doing Internet stuff. No one else is in the building, so it makes for a good working environment, albeit a bit too quiet at times. The fire alarm began going off at one point, and I faced the old institutional dilemma of whether or not to treat it as real. I opted for the latter and continued working. When the frequency changed, I decided I had better check it out, so I went out into the lobby and surprised three guys who were standing around with clipboards. “Oh, we’re just testing,” one of them said. “I thought so. Carry on,” I replied, “I think I’m the only one here.” But I decided it was time for a walk anyway.

My campus is simply gorgeous. Oak trees stand sturdily on an immense green space that is surrounded by Spanish-style architecture set off by red-tiled roofs. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the breezes were actually cool in the shadows of the oaks. Palm trees, scattered along the edges, acquiesce to the oaks but make their point at regular intervals and rise above everything to remind everyone that the ocean is not far away. I walked up the hill to the administration building to see about getting my ID, and the nice woman there told me where to go. As I walked down the other side of the hill, I looked up at what appeared to be a cell phone tower over the English building, and there was a hawk perched there grooming himself. I remembered being out here in May for commencement and watching a hawk hunt from one of the oaks I was sitting under. It must be the same one. He was terrifyingly beautiful, and I thought of Blake’s line about the fearful symmetry of the tiger. I stood and watched him for a long time, and people who drove by must have wondered what I was looking at, but they didn’t stop to see. I was just as glad to have him all to myself.

My walk the day before was grueling. For some reason I decided to walk along a major thoroughfare in town, a four-lane leading to the freeway. Moreover, I decided to walk around noon, near the 100-degree mark, and it turned out that my route included a two-mile incline to one of the highest points in town. I was feeling it all by the time I reached the zenith and looked forward to a return loop that was downhill and in the shade. Of course someone pulled over to ask me directions, and I was no help at all. I took a few wrong turns and made my way back eventually, but this walk had taken a lot out of me, so I decided to hold off on another until the next evening. I looked at the map of my town and found a route that I thought would be pleasant, have continuous sidewalks, and not be a five-miler like the one I had previously done.

With the map in my head, I set out at the gloaming. A young boy next door said hello to me, and we introduced ourselves. He must be about twelve, but he spoke like one of my colleagues. He has long hair, and an air of confidence and whimsy about him. I liked him immediately. After I passed him, another young man on a cell phone in his yard looked up from his call and said “How’s it going?” “Great,” I said, “How are you?” It appeared that this walk was going to be different from that last evening walk when the people I crossed paths with were immersed in various social and personal dramas.

Then, as if out of nowhere, he appeared. Coyote.

Like everyone else who met him that evening, I did a double-take to make sure it wasn’t a dog. Nope. It was definitely a coyote, and he looked lost and forlorn. I spoke to him and asked him what the hell he was doing here in the middle of a city in southern California, and he just looked even more pathetic and desperate. “Come on, man,” I said, “Let’s get you out of here.” He seemed to follow me by leading me north and east, the way I was headed anyway, and I knew there was a park a mile or two up, which is part of the reason I chose this route. I was worried about him getting hit by a car or even shot. As Coyote and I walked the streets of this pacific town, I was able to watch others’ reaction to him like it was a reality TV show. A man pushing a stroller and talking on a headset crossed a street, and I smiled inwardly as he took in the sight of a coyote walking the same street. He almost stopped in the middle of the road as he registered what was happening. Coyote and I kept walking. He maintained a respectful distance from me but kept looking back to see if I was following. I was. Or I was going where I had intended to go all along, but I wanted him to go too because I felt sorry for him. He clearly wasn’t rabid, just confused and a little lost. Upon first seeing me in Boston after the loss, St. Eileen said that I looked like Tom Hanks in Big: a little boy who was lost and whose suit was too big for him. How could I not empathize with another lost soul?

We turned on another major street, and two kids on bikes were riding along the sidewalk ahead of us. I thought about warning them, but they turned onto another street and away from Coyote and me. A woman sat on the front porch of her lovely home, and I nodded to her. “Excuse me,” she said, “Are those your kids?” I said they weren’t. “Well, okay,” she said haltingly, then decided to say what she was going to say if they were: “I’m a grandmother, and there’s a coyote loose in the neighborhood, and I don’t think those kids should be out while that thing is loose.” I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say, so I said, unhelpfully, “They’ve turned onto another street, and he’s going north now anyway.” Satisfied that she had said her peace and gotten even a tangential response, she sat down on her wicker chair like a queen who has just made a pronouncement. Meanwhile, a woman up the street had come out of her house leading a little dog, the kind my big and princely dog, the Thane of Fife, would have considered a chew toy. I watched her as she casually took stock of the evening and prepared for a lovely walk with her chew toy. As she turned and registered Coyote, i could almost see the fear in her face, even though she was a block away. She quickly grabbed up the chew toy, and fled into the house. By now others were coming out of their houses and pointing to Coyote, taking no notice of me, his companion. Coyote grinned at them, paused long enough to let them know he saw them, checked once or twice to see if I was still there, then kept walking. No one left the boundaries of their property, but they were fascinated by Coyote because he was a real episode of Animal Planet, but they also wanted the commercial break to get something to eat, so they eventually went back to their living rooms. As Coyote and I continued to climb to the ridge I had walked the day before, the houses and yards began to be larger and therefore more spread out. A church appeared on the left, just ahead, and I saw Coyote head in there. “No,” I said to him, “that’s not a good idea.” But as I came upon the church I saw a lot of green space bordered by hedges and changed my mind. “Okay,” I said to Coyote, “just stay in there until dark, then you can head back to the desert.” I looked to see if I could see the wily creature hiding along the hedges. I didn’t. Then I looked at the very center of the carefully manicured lawn, right in front of the church sign, and there he was–urinating, with a wide grin on his face. He smiled at me as I kept walking. He must have had a lot to drink that day. His thoughts on the church were fairly clear, and I swear I could smell the urine all the way across the street. Then I realized I had been had. Coyote’s oldest trick is to make you feel sorry for him, and I had fallen for it like the straight man in every coyote story I had ever read. “You got me, you old trickster,” I said to him as he continued to squat in front of the church. “Have a good night.”

I didn’t see him anymore, but as two women walked toward me in the growing darkness, I smiled and said simply “Coyote on your right.” I could hear them, their voices rising with lots of vowels, as they saw what I meant. I smiled like Coyote and continued on to the park, where I was treated to a glorious sunset over the San Bernardino Mountains. A rabbit appeared in front of me at one point and stood unfazed as I approached. “Today I have seen a hawk and a coyote,” I said, “this is not your night.” He immediately jumped back into the orange grove, and I walked back to my home, smiling my Coyote smile and thinking this is beginning to feel like home.