When The Gods Fail

I have a new routine now, one that’s been going on for the past week. The alarm goes off at 5 am. Silently, without a word, I roll out of bed. I shuffle over to the bathroom, the only sound my dragging feet on the carpet. I attach the hose to the sink faucet, and adjust the temperature of the water. In the cold darkness of the morning the water always feels hotter than it really is.

Trying to ignore the band around my chest that makes it hard to breathe, I whistle softly for Dakota. Like always, at the sound of my whistle he limps in. “Go,” I whisper. He hesitates for just a second, then steps over the side of the tub, one foot held gingerly in the air. He rests his forehead against my chest, a barely audible sigh escaping his tight lips, as he shuts his eyes tight. I try to detach, stop feeling, go somewhere else as I take hold of his foot. I look desperately for any sign of improvement. The top of the foot looks like a gunshot wound. Necrotic flesh, white and ragged, stands out against the angry red skin that surrounds the wound. The drain cut by the vet into the bottom of Dakota’s foot oozes clear fluid, the red edges of the hole gaping as I flex the toes. His foot feels hot and full in my hand, now swollen to twice it’s normal size.

Dakota turns his head towards me as I turn on the water and start the debrieing. The jets of water rip into the wound, the strings of flesh jerking back and forth in the flow of water. The next part is the hardest. I take a deep breath, cussing the foulest epitaphs imaginable under my breath. Starting at the hock, I start wrenching and twisting the fluid-swollen limb, milking the septic fluid out the open drain in the bottom of his foot. Dakota turns and looks at me. His eyes are on fire, they burn into me with their intensity. I feel no threat, but I know he’s looking for an object to unleash his wrath on. It’s a look of pain and anger, of wanting to exorcise the pain and frustration the only way he knows how. But he won’t do it. Not to me, the immediate source of his misery. When we began this routine, I thought to keep the girls away from him, concerned for their safety, but they give him a wide berth, sensing the danger that he now contains.

Not a sound escapes his lips, no whines or growls. Our eyes meet, I murmur made up words that have no meaning except I love you, it’s going to be all right, trust me. “Cush cush,” I whisper, as I lean my head against his side. The pads of my thumbs bear down relentlessly into the tight, swollen flesh of his foot as we continue. I watch his ribs rise and fall rapidly as he starts panting from the pain. Toxic looking viscous fluid seeps from the drain in his foot, swirling in a red kaleidoscope as it mixes with blood and the water of the spray.

I stare at the drain in the bottom of his foot, trying to make it just a slit, a disembodied laceration, not a part of the flesh and blood creature that shares our bed every night. Dakota’s eyes never leave my face. I don’t know what he’s looking for, what he expects to see. I try to hide my guilt from him. I speak much braver than I feel. I’ve failed him.

Once, somewhere, I read something, a fast blurb of wisdom. “To a dog, every man is a god.” To which, in my mind, I always add “Are you living up to his expectation?” We are their gods. We provide the necessities of survival, food, shelter, vaccinations, protection from harm. Some of us go even further, providing purpose, meaning, training, direction, and love. In return we get the love that only someone who has been consoled by a wet tongue and warm furry body can understand. The perfection of unconditional love and complete admiration.

Your dog doesn’t care what color your skin is, how much money you make, how big your house is or even if you live in one. We are their gods, we petitioned for the position in a deal some dark night, long ago in our collective past, when a hand in a fire-warmed cave reached out with a hunk of meat towards one brave ambassador. A contract more binding, and longer lived, than anything ever dreamed up or created by the lawyers of today.

The best parts of me, the parts I look to with honest pride and think yes, that’s me, are only evident with my dogs. But now, I’ve failed to keep my part of the bargain.

Dakota’s soft but insistent whining woke me up in the predawn hours this morning. I let him outside to do his business. He sat before me, crying softly as he shook his leg, the pain and swelling refusing to go away. He looked up at me with his soft brown eyes, waiting for me to fix it. I could only stroke his massive head and whisper words of empathy.

I have no answer. Neither does the vet. The surgery that should have fixed things only provided temporary respite. I realize once more how irreplaceable this dog is. Not just as stud, but as friend, a family member. How lucky I was he chose me, that day when we went to look at the litter. I remember the little buckskin bundle of fur that wobbled over to my lap and promptly fell asleep there. My eyes fill and the now familiar tightness in my chest constricts yet another notch.

In a few hours we’ll all go into the bathroom again, to repeat the process one last time for the night. I’ll watch the corded muscles of his thighs quiver as he stoically, silently, endures the torment of my ministrations. We’ll go to bed, Dakota exhausted by the ongoing ordeal falling asleep quickly. Like every night for the past week, I’ll lie awake late into the night, stroking the flank that nestles up against my side, and wait for the morning and a change in his condition, afraid to hope but even more afraid not to.

Ode to a Piece of Dirt...

Winter has come to our valley. Not THE valley, Salt Lake City, but the other valley. Our valley. The small patch of ground ringed by hills and mountains southwest of the city. Out in the back of the West Desert. I first came upon our valley last year as Spring was giving way to Summer. Randomly driving down dirt roads and over hills, I crested one hill to see a small valley spread out before us. A perfect basin, wearing a humble covering of sagebrush and cheatgrass. Rolling to a stop, Dakota the desert dog and I left the truck on the summit of the hill and made our way down the hillside to the valley floor. The dry Utah heat had sucked the moisture from the ground. The clean, sweet smell of dirt filled my nose, the tangy aroma of the sage blending into a Utah scent unmistakable for anywhere else. Dakota lifted a leg on a stunted and gnarled juniper, marking this valley as ours, daring the coyotes to trespass.

Dust rose from our steps as we walked over the rusted, empty shotgun shells previous hunters had left. This valley was far from being wilderness, signs of "civilized" man were everywhere. Decrepit hulks of refrigerators and sinks littered the hillside, all sporting bullet holes in their carcasses, no longer a threat to innocent hikers. Man with his disposable concepts had come and gone. Faint concentric patterns in the dirt of the valley floor told of a time when someone had cultivated this land. How long had it taken the harrow discs to break up the topsoil, leaving it exposed to the erosion of wind and rain? As the rich topsoil was borne away by the canyon winds, the useful grasses withered and died of starvation. Now the sagebrush was moving, slowly and patiently reclaiming the valley floor, happily intermingling with the rough cheat grass that scraped against my hands as we walked.

Appearing barren at first glance, the valley soon began showing signs of life. Watching the zones of transition, where animals frequent, I soon began to see signs of the inhabitants. Shallow tunneled runs in the tall grass showed me the paths of field mice. Dakota's nose led us to to a den, but the dried, barren nest he unearthed had been abandoned long ago. We followed a game trail into the sagebrush, following the edge of the field. Scat of jackrabbits showed up underneath the sagebrush.

One path led us to what looked like a minature buffalo wallow. A round section of the ground had been scratched up, exposing the fine sandy dirt underneath the rocks and lichen. It was a wallow, but one for jackrabbits. I could imagine the scene on moonlit nights, as the big jacks came to this spot to roll in the dust, soaking the clogging oils from their coats, scrubbing off the parasites, and perhaps reveling in the feel of the earth as Dakota does when I see him rolling on his back in the yard, a pit bull grin of delight plastered on his face.

It may sound as if I hold the jackrabbits in high esteem, when in reality they are merely oversized rodents. Well, I admit grudgingly these turbo kamikazes of the sagebrush have earned my respect. Our little valley holds a small, pressured population of these rabbits. Nearly every weekend a brace of young hunters beats the sagebrush, seeking the elusive jack. More often than not, the hunters go home empty handed.

I visit this valley nearly every day. In this way I've come to know the jacks that we jump off the nests. I learned the older jacks had acquired many tricks and could adapt their tactics. Many times I sat and watched as hunters walked within feet of a hunkered down jack. In that frail body, nostrils filled with the smell of the predator, I saw nerves of steel and a wild cunning that I could only respect and admire. One jack continues to frequent the grass field, eschewing the relative safety of the sagebrush and his ken. I stalked this jack numerous times, and watched in amazement as he literally disappeared into the valley floor when I thought I had him ready to flush. No burrows were ever found at the spot where he disappeared from. It was as if the ground swallowed him up, only to spit him back out somewhere far behind me.

One day, watching as a group of boys tried to stalk and kill this jack, I was able to see his trick, and admire his skill and cunning. The jack had marked the small rises that dot the valley floor in his memory. As the young hunters drove the rabbit forward, I saw his form sinking behind one of these rises. I watched as the jack flattened himself out full length on the ground. Looking for all the world like a minature soldier, the jack belly crawled in a wide arch around the hunters, using whatever cover he could find, ears held tight against his skull. His body flowed over the terrain like a drop of brown mecury, molding to the contours of the ground. Calmly, he waited until the hunters had passed. Sensing the timing was right, he pistoned up out of the grass and lit the afterburners that surely must have resided somewhere in his lean, gaunt body. The boys sent out a futile barrage of impotent bullets, but the jack was well out of range. I let my breath out in a whoosh, unaware I had been holding it as I watched this drama unfold. I hoped this rabbit would live long enough to send more of his offspring out in the world.

The summer and fall passed as we made our daily sojurn out to the valley. The dogs, once free of the truck, bound from the seat and dashed in circles, tongues hanging out the sides of their mouths, crazed grins speaking their joy at their freedom to run and wrestle, unhindered and unencumbered. Together, we sat and watched as the storms of Fall rolled down from the sides of the Ouquirrh Mountains to lash our valley with rain and thunder. We watched warily as snow began to show on the tips of the Wasatch range. The animals became scarcer. Most of the new crop of rabbits and mice had fallen prey to the hawks and coyotes that frequent the valley. Darwin made me a believer. Small Mule deer, pushed down from the mountains by the snow, started to appear in the dusk as we drove out of the valley, silent dun colored ghosts rising up out of the twilight.

This week, the first serious snow hit our lowlands, and a new phase begins. At last the valley is tricked into giving up the secrets of her nocturnal happenings. Slipping and sliding in the truck, we return to our valley, now cloaked in fresh snow. We run down the hillside from the parked truck, Dakota and I full of energy from a week spent indoors and needing to run and jump. We stop at a bright red patch of blood in the snow. Swept indentations in the snow and auburn-ticked patches of fur tell the story. Here a raptor took a rabbit. The cycle of predator and prey, symbiotic joining, continues. A high powered slug from a hunters rifle or silent death from the sky in the form of an owl, rabbits are the cannon fodder of the natural world. They literally live to die. Heading into the sagebrush, now heavy with the wet snow, we track the rabbits, seeing the traffic and realizing the numbers of jacks that still exist. Winter will be hard out here, but enough will survive to re-populate the valley in Spring and feed the hawks through the winter.

We come to a deep ravine that cleaves the floor of the valley in half. I have a superstitious fear of the ravine. It's bottom, packed solid with the skeletal yellow forms of tumbleweeds, triggers my imagination. I see a solid carpet of rattlesnakes, churning and writhing beneath the cover of the tumbleweeds. I imagine the fangs slamming into my flesh as I tumble into the ravine, a missed step leading to my slow, agonizing demise. Dakota breaks out of the brush ahead of me, in hot pursuit of a small cottontail rabbit, yanking me from my daydreams of horrible death. Hopelessly outmanuevered, he ambles back to me with a satisfied grin. He's well fed, the game for him is mostly in the chase.

I think about the snakes that I have actually seen in this valley. Never have seen a rattlesnake here in truth. First found were the little brown grass snakes, eluding me in the small fissures of the hard ground as I snuck up on them. No more than 6 inches in length, these snakes were numerous in the Summer but had gone by Fall.

I recall a very special day, only a month or two back as I made my second reptilian discovery. Walking the field, movement in the dirt stopped us. A baby gopher snake was making his way towards the ravine, sleek and shiny in his new brown and yellow scales. Picking him up with the muzzle of my rifle, I watched as his supple form wrapped itself around the steel. Dropping him into my open palm, I watched as the heat of my skin relaxed his body. His tongue moved about over my palm, retelling to the snake the substance of what it had found. The sensual feel of his smooth scales sliding across my hand made me smile. I felt lucky to have seen this reclusive, vulnerable animal. Placing him back on the ground, we watched as he slid off to a destination only he was sure of, guarding against passing enemies.

I thought of the other remarkable reptile I had seen here. Once again the creature was betrayed by it's movement. Against the dirt, I spotted a fearsome looking little lizard that immediately brought back memories of my childhood. Holding still at the base of some grass, camouflaged by his color, sat a horned lizard. Horny Toad, in the vernacular of my southern California youth so many years ago. Before I could reach down to snatch the little dinosaur for closer inspection, he scuttled off, leaving me suffused with the memories of another time, when a day could be whiled away chasing lizards and watching clouds float by. Such days are precious few in my now adult world.

Walking up to the power lines, where we turn north to go back to the truck, I see the draw where Dakota found the fox last summer. His nose gave the first alarm. I watched as he slid down the ravine, nosing through the brush. The muscles in his neck bunched and jumped as I watched him work something free of the brush. The orange bundle of fur hanging from his mouth took me a minute to identify, as he scrambled back up the ravine. The last thing I expected was a dead fox. We looked at the small corpse as it lay on the ground. The back was arched, the mouth open in an empty scream of what? The lips were drawn back, exposing small but sharp teeth. It was a female, in the prime of her life.

Poisoning? It was my first thought, but I'll never know. No bullet holes on her body. The teeth were not even worn yet with age. Just another mystery. The dead hawks I have found there are less of a mystery. Their bodies riddled with buckshot, empty shotgun shells litter the ground near where they lie. Choosing to ignore federal laws protecting the remains of raptors, I take the parts that I can use. A totem from my earliest memory, hawks have always bid well for me.

Sometimes anger, sometimes despair runs through me as I survey the meaningless slaughter. I think about the rabbit and a wave of guilt washes through me. Conflicting emotions that leave my head spinning threaten to rise up in my thoughts. Shoving the whole stinking mess back into my subconcious, I bury the remains, afraid to leave any inspiration to future poachers.

The last part of the walk is all uphill. I'm breathing hard as the exertion hits my body. The stick I'm throwing for Dakota sails end over end through the chill air, caught in a red glow by the setting sun. Cresting the hill, the cold wind whips my long hair against my face as I turn to look at the mountains that surround us in our basin. The tops of the Wasatch Mountains are burning red, as the sun sinks below the horizon. All around us, it appears the moutains are ablaze, the snow-encrusted peaks reflecting the final weak rays of the evening sun.

I give a silent thank to God for another day well spent, hopefully well lived. Dakota's heavy head comes to rest in my lap as we start the truck and head home. I look in my rear view mirror at the valley floor, wondering what will happen under the cover of the night, what I might miss. I'm coming to learn this piece of land and the lessons it holds. In some strange way, this little piece of land restores me much like a huge tract of wilderness. The lessons learned in this little island of sage and scrub grass are more urgent, more direct somehow. The stage is smaller, but the play no less gripping.

Pulling onto the highway, I point the truck home. I feel my body relax from the tensions of the day. An audible sigh of contentment comes from the sleeping pit bull in my lap, his eyes closed in restless slumber. I try not to think about the freeway that is planned through our valley, the orange survey tape that was hanging from a juniper as we left. The valley is no longer a chunk of land to me, but a part of my life. A teacher; a source of knowlege and rejuvenation for me. I am coming to know it's rhythms and inhabitants. It's hard to watch the destruction of something you've come to know intimately. My protest is futile, but I have to continue. Some things I guess I do for their own sake, so I can live with myself. The thought occurs to me - some dogs aren't meant to run in a fenced in yard or park. Neither are some men and women...


Addendum: As of 2010, that little valley is now covered by a 18 hole golf course and a planned community with covenants, consisting of houses only the rich can afford. The sage brush has been replaced with manicured lawns. When it rains the only smell is that of the Chemlawn residue running off the lawns into the ground…

Lessons From A River Rat...

The Snake River in Wyoming represents a fading ideal in the United States. Egalitarian and non-commercial, anyone with a suitable floating device and a strong enough desire is able to go rafting down this stretch of water.

The Snake is not a pacific creek or brook. This is not a river of softly rounded, dirt banks and mud shoals as so often found in the waterways of the Midwest and out East. This is a body of water that has thrashed, beat, and carved its way through solid granite, an ancient liquid assault on the ultimate immovable object. The path of the river winds through sheer granite walls that still bear the scars of the river's gouging. The water itself is moody and insubordinate. Precisely the reason hard core river rats are drawn to it.

A commercial outfitter found in or around Yellowstone or Grand Teton National Park can show the tourists a fun raft ride down the Snake. I took one myself many years ago. We departed from the banks behind Jenny Lake Lodge, the current of the river gently tugging the nose of our little raft and pulling it downstream. We were treated to truly majestic panaramas of the Grand Tetons, and wildlife around every bend. We hit a small series of riffles and our little tourist group smiled and whooped in our life preservers. I let out a whoop too, a smile on my lips. The drama over, the trip at its end, we disembarked dry and happy.

My next trip down the Snake was a little different. As I think back now it was really a rescue mission. A friend at work had talked about his river running exploits. The pictures on the wall of his cubicle only served to whet my appetite; blurred explosions of color captured by the camera, I was struck by the milky blue of the water, the bright yellow sunlight, the white foam of the crashing water, and the bronzed skin of the rafters shiny from waves and spray. So when he offered to let me accompany him with his wife and another couple, I jumped at the opportunity.

My friend was not the actual captain of the raft that we would be riding down the river. I met the captain as we prepared to leave in the early dawn in Salt Lake City, loading the trucks in my friend's driveway. My first impression of the man was big, bald, and full of life. I immediately felt comfortable placing my life in his hands.

That comfort evaporated the next morning as we stood on the banks and I watched the crashing water roar up at us from the canyon below. There seemed to be no possible way that something as fragile as a rubber raft could survive the gauntlet of waves and rocks below. And yet, as we stood there watching the river, I began to see rafts coming into view, skillfully piloted through and around the granite obstacles that rose up out of the water. Popping like corks up through foaming waves. Full of grinning, furiously paddling rafters who were by all appearances enjoying themselves mightily.

Too late to back out now, I stepped into the raft with my 4 raft-mates and we shoved off to meet the river. I had spent the night before lying on my back in my tent, listening to the sounds of the wind as it rushed through the trees. My mind was still back in my house in Salt Lake City, where a toxic marriage and unhappiness had made a home. That I was alone without my wife on this trip should tell you enough.

Regardless of the fact I had made a bad choice in spouses, in careers, and in the direction of my life, I was firmly convinced that all that was required to set my life right was more force applied. More force applied to my angry and hurting wife, more force applied to those I worked with, most of all more force applied to myself. All these problems, creating such discomfort, such dis-ease, in so many people, were but nails that simply needed to be pounded with a bigger hammer that I would be weilding. And I truly saw my will as the hammer that would continue to grow and conquer as these problems continued to grow and refuse to submit to my will.

As we left the shore in the raft, the river gave no pretense of gentleness. We were rudely and powerfully yanked into the current, the dynamics of running a river set into motion before I had a chance to consider the process. There had been a brief pre-launch safety lecture from our captain but all that had manged to filter down through the many shouting voices in my head that morning were "stay in the boat." With that in mind I took a death grip on the rope that ran around the circumference of the raft. I looked downstream and noted with some hysteria that the rather large boulders seemed to be coming straight at us, and much faster than I was comfortable with. I turned to my friend and asked him what we were doing. He looked at me and smiled.

"We are trying to maintain the illusion of control."

Ah. "And those rocks?" I asked.

"We'll try to go around them." "If we get stuck up against them the raft can get sucked under and flip." "If you get pinned against the rock you'll most likely drown."

Ah. Splendid. Merely seeking a temporary escape from a troubled home life I had engaged on a suicide mission with a group of lunatics. And yet the lunatics were laughing, genuinely enjoying their pre-death moments and the companionship on that raft.

We skirted the boulders and I caught my breath just in time to feel us surf up the back of a large wave, created by a boulder submerged below us in the riverbed. As Edward Abbey pointed out, unlike oceans, the waves in rivers are stationary with the water running through them. One moment I was watching the sky and admiring the buckle on my Teva sandal that was above my head. The next moment I was throwing myself onto the rear of the raft in an instinctual attempt to keep the raft from filling over as we careemed down the face of the wave.

Before I could even regain my seat we slid over a great sucking whirlpool, I felt the front of the raft level out, the rear of the raft then sucked violently back into the hole, caught in the spinning vortex of confused water. Paniced I looked over at our captain who was smiling.

"Wanted to give it a second chance to eat us."

He had done this on purpose, I see now that he had intentionally steered us into the hole. And yet he wasn't worried. On the contrary, he seemed amused. I was glad I could provide amusement and yet I wasn't quite ready to be sucked down to my watery grave. We actually sat and talked as the water tried to pull the raft under. Our captain explained the conditions of the riverbed that sculpted and created suck holes and eddies. How calm navigation could allow you to break free of the suction and current every time.

On that day I took away many lessons on how to read a river, and how to run them in a raft. While I was never delusional enough to think I was now ready to grab a raft of my own and take off down the river, I ran more whitewater in future summers, everywhere from Canada to the 4 Corners in the Southwest. Always I enjoyed the rush of adrenaline and exhiliration of being alive, but without the panic and fear that the unknown held for me on that first run down the Snake River.

If someone new to river rafting asked me for a list of suggestions and rules for navigating a raging river, my advice would look something like this:

• Those who stay on the shore get left behind.
• Approaching the unknown with humility is a good survival skill.
• When you think nothing can go wrong, remember it's just the illusion of control.
• Rocks won't move for you. Move out of the way of the rocks. If you insist on battling a rock, you might very well die by that rock.
• Even when you're halfway down a suckhole, you can still break free.
• The only way to learn how to break free of a suckhole is to find yourself in one.
• With practice, suckholes that once used to scare you, will later amuse you.
• You can't avoid all the waves in a river, learn to ride them.
• Although scary at the time, later on what you'll remember about the waves is the exhiliration of surviving them.

And perhaps the most important lesson of all, you are not alone in the raft. So if you fall overboard, don't panic someone will come by to pick you up.