Of Dogs, and Me

I can't decide if I find it curious or alarming that I seem to be able to conjure up a lot more empathy for animals than I can for most people (apart from the ones who make up the matter in my personal universe). Is this a flaw? Does it mean I'm insensitive? Not entirely human? After I watched The Ring the other night, the single image that continued to haunt me was the horse jumping off the moving ship – I very nearly cried when it happens. I can't be bothered with a road trip across the state to see my friend John play near Philly this weekend (a friend I haven't seen since Sequoia, circa 1996), yet I will gladly drive to rural West Virginia saturday to try to save one, possibly two, dogs from a kill shelter there, just because the NE Ohio Collie Rescue has asked me to. Oh, and then on Sunday I will drive the dog(s) to Youngstown, to drop them off again.

I wish there was a Real Way (i.e. a non-financially stupid one) to take this passion and make it my vocation, my mission in life. I would be a lot happier.

Only You Can Prevent...

Maybe it's just my over-protectiveness when it comes to animals of the ursine variety – after having lived alongside them in sequoia for so many years – but as sad as this story is, I still can't help but think: Wild animals are wild animals, and human carelessness can be prevented. And once again, it's the animals who were doing nothing more than trying to live their lives as they're meant to, who ultimately suffer the fate of this carelessness. If you go around tempting the Fates and petting bears like they're happy-and-harmless-bumbling-ole-Pooh, bad, bad things are bound to happen. As simple as that. People really, really need to think about what they're doing. Grr.

Standing and Walking

In spite of everything that has settled down like rain, it is good to know that I can still feel inexplicably and completely connected to This Universe. That there are still days when the questions themselves no longer matter and it is enough simply to be as I am now, fully present, awake and aware. And that this sensation, this incredible, connected sensation, can be sustained beyond a fleeting moment.

The Question Has Vanished, But I Remember Your Eyes

Funny how a few simple paragraphs in an email from an old friend can be transcendent, words transformed into elegies for what they signify, words that are metaphors of memory: for love and happiness and pain. Everything becomes measured by tangible markers of time, so we will always remember where we have been, where we are, and where we will go. Eleven years ago, I first arrived. Seven years ago, I watched the trees fade into the darkness behind me as I left The Mountain for the last time, a life permanently, irrevocably, altered. Four years later, and three years since that I closed my eyes and realized all my dreams of the forest were real, if but for the briefest of moments. I should have lingered there much longer, long enough to memorize again the shape and meaning of the forest. As much as I knew that part of my life couldn’t last forever (forever always seems too long for me anyway), hardly a day goes by that I don't still, always, long for those days, the mountains, the forest, the people. It was a time when I could be as self-centered as I liked, with hardly a thought toward a future of any kind, because I was young and it simply didn’t matter. I even find myself longing now for all the horrible memories I have of those years, just to be able to return to that time. I can honestly say that there have been only a handful of perfectly happy moments in my life, moments when everything feels magical and amazing and perfect and just as it should be. My first season in sequoia is one of them. No matter how much time passes it remains an inextricable part of me. I would not be who I am now without having been there, without having been forever changed by the experience.

I tell my friend: It would be lovely to one day be able to show you all the many places I have loved here — even the place which long ago held the pay telephone where I would stand in the dark stillness of Sierra nighttime and whisper your name.

Forgiveness is
letting go of all
hopes for a better past.

Gutter and Downspout, Rock & Ripped Leaf

The only thing that gets me through the winters here in this part of the country is knowing that summer will arrive. Almost June now, and for weeks, weeks, weeks the temperature has rarely approached even 70 degrees and there is simply rain, rain, and more rain. The ten-day extended forecast remains uninspiring. I keep waiting for a sign, a hint, an omen, anything that promises warmth and sunshine and summer. My toes long for liberation, Gore-Tex makes me feel uncomfortably claustrophobic and I'm tired of contemplating the mysteries of my umbrella. My seasonal affective disorder lingers and I grow impatient. Ever, ever impatient.