Desire Lines

I have wandered every concrete, tarmac, grass, and dirt path near my house. And yet my dog Hurricane, or just plain Cane, knows their way better than I do. He knows when the scent of the trail must yield right, left, or straight ahead. When the desire lines must lead forward to greater passions or the stench of fear should force doubling back.  

Today, Cane is all forward momentum, following the flattened grass past the eroded foot trails, beyond the perfect registration of deer, into the warrens, stopping only in hesitation at the barely-there print of a broad plantigrade walker, its edges pressed into the damp grass, its weight undeniable.  

He knows it as only something bigger than himself. I think that maybe it's a bear, or even worse, something just as patient, just as watching.  

Cane’s nostrils flare. His fur lifts along his spine. Then, he shifts. His body contracts. He pulls inward, ready to turn. And he does turn, but not toward me. His head swivels sharply to the side. His ears cut the air, his body still taut.  

Something is there. Here. Watching.  

I see a figure slip through the brush—low, lean, measured in its movements. A coyote. Its fur is a patchwork of dust and hunger. There is a white, ripped-open kitchen bag in its mouth. Chicken bones and spoiled lettuce leak onto the ground. It stops shy of the clearing, its unblinking eyes fixed on us.  

Cane doesn’t growl. He doesn’t lunge. He knows the difference—how a thing that stalks is different from one that runs.  

But Cane trembles now. His muscles twitch under his fur, breath shallow, a guttural whine slipping through his teeth.  

The coyote tilts its head—slow, deliberate, testing. Then, a shift—a barely perceptible adjustment in weight, its haunches lowering just enough to suggest it is considering the space between us, measuring distance, gauging intent. Its jaw tightens, a subtle flex of muscle beneath the dirt-matted fur, the faintest parting of its lips as if preparing to speak in the only way it knows how.  

I remember my brother, the angler, advising me on what to do in coyote encounters. Hazing, he called it.  

With my free hand, I take my Boricua pride cap off my head and start waving its black shading-to-gray mesh above me. I tug Cane’s leash with my bound hand, forcing him behind me.  

The coyote stiffens but does not yield.  

I shout the most primal, profane thing I can recall in the Spanish I knew before English took over my thoughts.  

“Puta de madre, déjame an mí y a mi perro en paz. Vuelve al agujero infernal de donde viniste.”  

The coyote doesn’t move.  

I stomp at it. I lunge forward, kicking dirt, grass, and twigs into its face. Cane whimpers, tensing further, his weight pressing into my leg like he wants to fold into me, disappear into safer ground.  

Still nothing.  

I pray for a miracle, reciting the prayer my mother taught me for moments of helplessness.  

"God, my Defender, I come to You in fear and helplessness..."  

I pray beyond all the desire lines I knew. Praying to above, to everything, to anyone that can hear and save me.  
Then, the earth quakes beneath us.  

It starts as a distant but insistent hum, building into a growl that swallows the silence. The ground shivers beneath my boots. Then Cane flinches, ears flattening, legs coiled to flee.  

The sound comes first—the grinding roar, the violent protest of metal against stone. Then the scent—gasoline thick in the air, choking the breath from my lungs, mixing with the raw pungency of turned soil. Dust rises, catching in my throat, coating my skin in the residue of a world undone.  

Or renewed?  

The bulldozer bursts through the treeline with no hesitation, no regard for the delicate fractures of the earth beneath its treads. The clearing shifts before my eyes—grass swallowed, warrens collapsed, footprints erased in the wake of industry’s advance. The soft, worn trails Cane and I followed, flattened under the rhythm of our footsteps, are lost beneath metal weight.  

It grinds forward relentlessly, its blade shoving uprooted grass into twisted piles, its treads pressing deeper with each pass, embedding their mark where instinct once did. The scent of earth is overtaken now—by the acrid sting of oil, by heat radiating off steel, by the mechanical certainty that does not pause to consider what was here before.  

The coyote hesitates—just for a breath, just long enough to judge this new threat—then vanishes, a ghost swallowed into the shadows of the trees.  

Cane bolts first, his body snapping into motion, sprinting back down the path we came. I stand there longer than I should, staring at what remains.  

Desire lines—paths shaped by instinct, longing, and familiarity. Each marks an unspoken decision, a pull toward something known or unknown.  

And now, buried.  

The bulldozer moves forward, carving a permanence we cannot undo.  

Cane pauses just ahead, glancing back over his shoulder, his eyes dark and unsure. He does not whine. He does not wait for me. He simply watches—just for a breath—then turns away, retreating with more certainty than I can muster.  

I know I should follow. The path to safety is clear. But for a moment, my feet are heavy, pressed into the dirt like I might leave my own mark here, some proof that I existed before the machines came.  

Then, finally, I turn back, tracing Cane’s desire lines to safety—the ones that lead not toward curiosity but away from ruin.