Life With Dog: "It's just us, girl."

When she was Tiny Girl

When the Artist left Willcox, Arizona, for the last time, it was in a helicopter after hours spent in the ER at North Cochise Community Hospital while the ER doc scoured the state for a hospital that had a room available and could provide the necessary surgery. I had put a deposit down on the puppy only days before, and now, as the Artist was wheeled out to the helicopter on a gurney into the dark hours past midnight, I told him he had to get through the next ordeal, because “the little girl needs a daddy.” He was amused, knowing I was talking about the puppy. 

 

As the medical people were getting him situated in the helicopter, though, the pilot asked me curiously, “What is your relationship to Mr. Grath?” Oh, good lord! Did he think I had been referring to myself in the third person as “the little girl” needing “a daddy”? But I just said, “I’m his wife” and stood watching as the helicopter lifted into the night sky – for a flight the Artist described to me afterward as “transcendent.”

 

I won’t recount all the events that followed (have already done so), but three weeks later my husband was gone forever, and I had to start my much diminished life alone with “the little girl” we thought we would be raising together – the puppy, Sunny Juliet. 

 

Now I often say to her, “It’s just you and me, girl!” She doesn’t have a clue. 

 

Other than her first eight baby weeks, a traumatic parting from beloved siblings, and then 10 days with one of my neighbors (while I sat by the Artist’s hospital bedside), life with me is all she has ever known. Here in the ghost town, of course, she has her Auntie Cheryl and Uncle John and Auntie Therese, as well as her dog-buddy and playmate, little Siberian Husky puppy Yogi, but home is the quiet cabin with her dog mom. Or, in Michigan, our quiet farmhouse. Or rides in the car, again just the two of us. Sleeping on my bed at night. But outdoor exercise and adventure and exploration off-leash every morning, these days with Yogi and Auntie Therese as well as the Momma, so she has a pretty good life overall.

 

Unlike me, she doesn’t know what she’s missing.

 

Whether here in southern Arizona in winter or back in northern Michigan in summer, the Artist sometimes worried about my outdoor rambles. “There could be bears,” he warned more than once, “and what would you do?” Forget bears! What about a bad fall? I used to urge our dog Sarah to “go find David!” in the house or the yard, reasoning that if she got in the habit, I might be able to send her home for help if I needed help. (“What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s fallen into the well?”) But never did I consider for one minute giving up the long walks, with or without a dog. And “without” never lasted long because, as the Artist put it to me once, “I need you, and you need a dog, so we need a dog.” 

 

The last time we had that conversation, it led to the search that led to Sunny Juliet. From the hospital in Chandler, waiting for his system to be clear of blood-thinning medication so he could have surgery, he urged me to bring the puppy home without delay, and then, when I had, he would ask every day, “How’s the little girl? Tell me about the little girl.” All his nurses knew about the puppy!

 

But he and Sunny Juliet never had a chance to meet, and she has no idea what she’s missing. To her, life must seem complete -- which seems unutterably strange to me when I miss so much of the way life used to be!

 

(“Lucky dog!” we used to say to each other in moments of envy when I was young.)

 

I just finished reading, for the first time, A Man Called Ove, and what brought me to tears was Ove missing his late wife’s laugh. The Artist had an irresistible smile, and when he laughed, ah! Who could help laughing happily with him? I miss exploring the world with him, holding hands, our conversations, his smile, his laugh – so much!

So now it’s up to Sunny Juliet to make me smile and laugh. And when she and Yogi are wrestling, tumbling all over each other, or trotting down a cow path side by side, or when they are sitting politely, eagerness and impatience barely holding them still as they wait for treats, what could be more enchanting? So good fortune is mine, in that I have a good and dear little companion, day and night, wherever I am. Also, in both Arizona and in Michigan, I have good friends and neighbors, and my dog and I have beautiful open space to explore, just the two of us or with friends. We have good health, both of us. And we have each other.

Michigan dog play

Arizona dog play

How does anyone face life, day after day, without a dog? The momma loves her little girl!

The momma with Tiny Girl, before she grew big

Doesn’t Everyone Want to be Rich? Adventure in the Mountains

Where did we go? What did we see? Read and find out!

[This adventure took place on 2/18/23, but I've fallen somewhat behind in posting, and the last adventure post (I just looked) was February 14. Sorry! There is another exciting overland adventure "in the can" that I'll try to post before the end of the week. If not then, first thing next week.]

***

My random reading – picking up books without a reading list or syllabus prepared ahead of time -- is good for finding all kinds of interesting information, and I never know when it may apply. For instance, lately at bedtime I’d been reading Anthony Trollope’s North America (reading this book for quite a long time, prolix writer that he was when not crafting fiction), and he kept mentioning “Dives” in passing, as if no one needed that explained. I did, though, so I did a little digging, and it turns out to be a reference to a “certain rich man,” unnamed in the New Testament, the one in the parable who refused to give poor hungry Lazarus so much as a crumb (Luke, 16: 19-31). Although the Bible does not give the rich man a name, readers over time found mistranslation of the Latin handy, and thus poems and songs (e.g., see here and here) came to be written about Lazarus and “Dives,” and as more time went by, “Dives” became a generic name for a rich man.

 

So when my hiking and dog-walking partner here in the ghost town proposed an expedition to the site of the old Dives Mine, only days after I’d learned the background of the name, the coincidence struck me forcibly. My friend had never heard of Dives as the name of the rich man in the parable, either, but I was sure that must be the reason behind the name of the mind: “They all wanted to get rich!” I exclaimed. “Well, of course!” was her response. She was too kind to add, "Duh!" But why else would anyone bother to open a mine?

 

Dos Cabezas as a mining town had a checkered history. The Dives Mine was first opened in 1877, but since it “reopened” between 1911and 1914, clearly it was not in continuous operation through all those decades, and 1942 saw it closed for good. Enormous rocks of white quartz are beautiful, but it was gold that the owners wanted, and the $60,000 worth of gold ore mined between 1882 and 1931 – five decades -- was not enough to make them rich. If you want to read more about mining in Dos Cabezas, see my 2015 blog post, which drew heavily for historical background from Phyllis de la Garza’s The Story of Dos Cabezas.

What to take --

Girls just wanna have fun.

The hike my friend planned for us would not be a deep exploration of mines, however. We visited some old mine structural ruins, but the real payoff was, as it so often is, just getting up into the mountains with our dogs.

dry stone wall

layers of depth

 Look carefully at the scene just above. Can you discern the two deep gullies we will have to negotiate to get to what is, as yet, the hidden site of the old mine? Down and up again, down and up again -- and then --

We approach the site

I don’t need signs or a fence to warn me to stay away from the entrance! But it’s good that the fence was there to keep our dogs out; we let them (as if we could have stopped them) explore water and mud instead. There were no cows there on the Saturday we hiked to the mine, but my friend says they love to gather there in summer, where there is always shade and cool water. No doubt!

Below is a kind of scene I love -- lichen on old ruins, drowsing in sun-dappled shadows.

What I hadn’t realized beforehand was that the mine site and ruins were only the preface to the real hike of the day. Somehow I neglected to photograph the old high road from below, but here is my friend on – does this look like a road to you? Once it really was....

Now look back down (below). Within that black oval is the mine site, where we were, with the trees and water, lichen-overgrown walls, and the old mine entrance guarded by the giant white quartz rock. 

Looking down on the mine site just visited.

And our road above the mine site is still climbing.

I keep looking back down and then up at the rocks ahead, trying to imagine reaching them.

Staggered themselves, staggering sight!

And yet there were buildings up here once!

This foreground rock formation was BLINDING white in the sun.

Ah, a tree! Lovely relief! 

(We have passed the tree now.)

Another mine entrance, this one not fenced off – a direction to discourage dogs from exploring. I breathe easier once we are past it. Bats? Bears? Or just a deadly fall straight down -- ???

We saw no bats or bears, but there were plenty of vegetable souls (pace Aristotle) all around us.

Look closely.

There it is on the ledge: a claret cup cactus.

Beautiful lichens dare the highest peaks.

Another brave old tree beyond the mine tailings. 

Lofty century plant overlooks distant valley.

Now we are bushwhacking. Puppies have youth's boundless energy!

Do I seem to be running low on words? Maybe because I am running out of breath. Legs are protesting, and thorns are mercilessly attacking hands and arms. My hiking partner, had she been with someone younger that day, would have gone farther and higher still, but I had reached my limit -- because, remember, as far as you go in one direction, you have to retrace that same distance returning, and the image below shows you how distant we were from our little ghost town. 

Dos Cabezas is inside the black oval. Beyond is the Sulphur Springs Valley and Dragoon Mountains on the valley's western perimeter.

Many years ago, my son complained aloud one day, “I’m tired of being poor!” The Artist told him, “We’re not poor. We’re just broke. We have a very rich life.” I often feel that way – rich without any kind of ultimate, worldly wealth. The cloud formations above the rocky spine of the mountains were beautiful. I didn’t need to strike gold or copper or encounter bats or bears. It was enough to hear a northern flicker laughing at us as we made our careful way back down what had long ago been a road. Even being exhausted, once back home, an afternoon spent reading and dozing on the couch, with sun coming through the blinds, felt luxurious. 

Dives? No, that's not me. Mine is another kind of rich life: life with a wet, muddy, stinky dog whose coat was so full of weedy prickers she needed an immediate (though very amateur) trimming job. Companionship and outdoor adventure. That's true wealth for me.

Come back soon for an expedition to another exciting, hidden-away corner of Cochise County, Arizona!

Companions in Our Isolation

We are not “birders,” the Artist and I, but here in Arizona on our annual seasonal retirement (scheduled to end in May, but who knows right now, given the current world situation?) we pay a lot of attention to birds. The hawk that swoops in front of our car and settles with beating wings on a mesquite tree by the side of the road, the droll little roadrunner, the “confiding” canyon towhee, and all the rest. But I told the Artist the other day, as we sat out watching birds, that every time I see the bright red male cardinal, I am carried back to my graduate student apartment in Cincinnati years ago. 

It was one more evening alone, studying in a one-bedroom apartment much roomer than necessary for someone with almost no furniture. My few clothes hung in a luxurious walk-in closet that could have housed, I often thought, an entire refugee family. Few clothes, little furniture — and yet I felt unbelievably fortunate, for in my first year of graduate study I received a monthly fellowship check which, thanks to frugal living and cheap beans and cheap beer the last week of every month, covered my living expenses. And all I had to do to earn that check was read and write: my obligation coincided with my chosen work. Heaven!

But the scholar’s heaven could be lonely, too. 

I think I must have been holding my awareness of loneliness at mental arm’s length for quite a while, because when a tiny red mite appeared on a page of my book, I was struck with inordinate delight: another living creature! Charming! Fascinating! A companion in my evening solitude!

If you search online for information about bright red clover mites, tiny creatures each smaller than the head of a pin, you’ll turn up all manner of pest control results, although everyone admits that the clover mite is harmless. It isn’t poisonous. It doesn’t bite, anyway. And even if it invades en masse, the invaders won’t live long indoors. 

Well, easy for me to say, maybe, because for me there was only the one. One tiny, tiny creature the brilliant color of a cardinal. What happened to it? I don’t remember. How long does a clover mite live, anyway, in the best of circumstances? That minuscule receptacle of life achieved a kind of immortality, though, because even now, years later, every time I see a bright red cardinal I remember with fondness that other, much smaller, long-ago, anonymous visitor.

The following day, when I shared the story and my response to the mite with another graduate student, expecting him to laugh, I was surprised and gratified when he shared a similar story. For him, a spider had provided companionship during a long evening of solitary study. A memoir called The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, tells of how much a small creature’s presence meant to one woman confined to her bed by a mysterious illness, and Barbara Kingsolver, in High Tide in Tucson, tells of a hermit crab she inadvertently brought back from a Caribbean vacation and the efforts she and her daughter made to keep it alive.

Other living things! They mean so much to us, these our fellow passengers on spaceship earth, perhaps especially when our socializing with human family and friends is necessarily limited. 

While those of us who share our homes with dogs and/or cats — or birds, fish, or reptile pets — know better than to take their companionship for granted, ever, I’ve been thinking of how much comfort and companionship we gets from plants, as well as from animals, during these days of staying home and “sheltering in place.” When I first shopped, as advised, for a possible two-week quarantine — how long ago was that? — one of the impulse items I added to my cart was a little $4.99 plastic pot containing a clump of three small succulent plants. The souls as well as the bodies of our household require feeding, I felt. And I don’t even know the name of this succulent plant. Maybe it’s some kind of hybrid. It doesn’t matter. I had bought the beautiful round clay planter at an estate sale, and the planter begged to be filled. A rusty piece of found industrial iron added height and variety. 

I can’t tell you how much I love looking at my little pot (it is right here beside me now) and inspecting the largest of the three small plants to see if it’s any closer to flowering than it was the previous day. On warm days it lives outside, but with the threat of freezing overnight temperatures (and we did have a hard frost that night) it came indoors, taking priority over stacks of books and magazines (can you believe it?) on the little table between our reading chairs. And actually, carrying the planter outside and back indoors increases my feeling of relationship with the plants in the pot. 

When the Little Prince in St.-Exupery’s story of the same name discovers that the rose he tended with such dedication was not, as she claimed to be, the only rose in existence, at first he felt hoodwinked, as if he had wasted his time caring for her. He is set straight (was it by the fox? I don’t have the book at hand) thusly: “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” 

The other day my hiking partner neighbor, after we had been out in the foothills with our dogs for a couple of hours, asked me if I would like a planter of mint. Sarah and I continued home, and Therese left the mint outside her gate for me to pick up with the car later. So now, when the Artist and I sit behind the cabin watching the birds, I also gaze fondly at a planter filled with healthy, vibrant, bright-green mint. My friend had advised me that I should water the mint when I got it home. Oh, good! The mint needs me! Responsibilities of caring for animals and plants that share our lives, like the responsibilities we have to each other, create bonds. 

Is it time to put another suet cake out for the birds? I’d better check....

…I thought I had finished a draft of this post, and then I looked online for other quotes from The Little Prince. When I got to this one, my skin broke out in goosebumps: 

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well….”

He loved his desert, I love mine. 

I ask you, what does it matter if the imaginary cat in the box is alive or dead? What matters to me is whether or not the sheep has eaten the beloved flower…. Books are also our companions, and The Little Prince gives us, in fantasy form, another example of an everyday hero, along with an ethics of care. Be well, stay safe and healthy, my friends!