di-ˌtər-mə-ˈnā-shən: firm or fixed intention to achieve a desired end…

Around the tree he goes. All business.
I stop to watch with mild amusement; my mind on other things.

Whether or not I can sense it, (I can’t) something was there. And his sense is strong enough that he won’t be easily put off. So he leaps and claws, and sniffs with this furious intensity, so excited he’s almost blind to his own opportunity…

I smell nothing, but I can see what he cannot.

“Listen, son.”

I have his attention.
“You might be able to actually get up there. But you’d have to start from here. See?”

I point to a new spot on the ground, then tap anchor points up the tree to well above my eye level.

“Then here, here, and here.”

I frankly don’t expect him to try. But I underestimate his determination.
He runs to where my finger started; whirls around. He doesn’t even pause to assess the viability of my suggestion.

He makes this scrambling charge, and he climbs.

He climbs to the point of no return, and just when I am thinking I should have thought this through better before making the suggestion, he flies out of the tree, squirrel-like.
And then he does it again. The whole thing. Nose working overtime.

He does it four times. Until his own nose and I finally convince him that what was there isn’t any more.
Crazy dog.
Or is he?

We turn to go. He, on to the next conquest.
I, to my thoughts in the quiet woods.

“Determination: firm or fixed intention to achieve a desired end…”

Intention fueled by the recognition of a reality the rest of the world totally missed.

What if we were like that?
I mean, the holy nation. The peculiar people…
Fueled by a recognition of a reality the rest of the world totally missed…

Who says the impossible is… impossible?
Dogs can climb trees. Especially if someone points out the way.
I can prove it.