I am Pierre’s dog.

Another dawn, another day

David, a.k.a. the Artist, took me to a new coffee house in Willcox, and we sat out on the front porch on Haskell Street (Business I-10) with our drinks. When I was in graduate school and reading Sartre, I wrote a paper called “Consciousness of Self and Pierre’s Dog.” Or maybe it was “Pierre’s Dog and Consciousness of Self.” The first line, anyway, was “Consider the dog in this café,” my variation on Sartre’s famous “Consider the waiter in this café.” In my version, Pierre’s dog was called that because, while Pierre did not own the dog, he and the dog had fixed morning routines in the café every day. Then comes a morning when Pierre does not appear, and everywhere the dog looks, all he sees is Pierre’s absence. 

 

As for reading, I haven’t finished a book since we were in Michigan, and that last book I read was Rinker Buck’s The Oregon Trail, which I left in Illinois (our second night out on the road) for my sister and brother-in-law to read. I tried to finish Absalom, Absalom! for a Zoom meeting with the reading circle but couldn’t manage to lock myself for long enough into that depressing, claustrophobic atmosphere to get through the last third of the book. Instead, while traveling and during our first days and nights here in the cabin, I read now and then a few pages of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, but my progress in it was slow, my attention repeatedly drawn away from the book to our dog’s unaccustomed demeanor. 

 

Then Sarah had a good day on Sunday, and I felt briefly optimistic that she would “recover from the trip,” as the Artist put it, and that we would have – not long hikes, but at least one more short walk with our neighborhood adventure pack before I had to leave her home on mornings I went off into the mountains with them. So on Monday and Tuesday of last week, which is to say during Sarah’s last days, I started into my winter writing project.

The following Tuesday, on what turned out to be her last day of life, I only “left” her briefly (we were scant feet apart and could look into each other’s faces whenever either of us had the desire) to sit with the handwritten diary that a young man in Pennsylvania began in 1854, a diary I will be transcribing this winter, putting his entries together with my own journal entries and other thoughts and reflections on his time and mine. 

 

Now that she is gone, I still read myself to sleep after an evening movie but have set aside SPQR for a comfort book, one of Alexander McCall Smith’s novels set in Botswana and featuring Mma Ramotswe. When we wake up in the middle of the night, as we do every night, the Artist and I may talk quietly or lie together in silence, but sometimes then too I turn on my bedside light to escape to Botswana. The cows in the book are comforting. I wish the cows of Dos Cabezas would pay us a visit, but they seem to be grazing and foraging somewhere out of sight.

The comfort of cows....

While I was lying on the floor with Sarah on Tuesday, stroking her head and fondling her ears, a Motown song by Gladys Knight and the Pips came into my head and would not go away, and it has been there ever since. “Neither One of Us Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye” is a song about a couple postponing a breakup they realize is inevitable. For me, it was about my dog – about Sarah hanging on and about my world having shrunk to wherever she was lying at any given moment. She never did “go to sleep” but kept following us with her eyes whenever we moved from one part of the room to another. She and I did not want to say goodbye to each other – and the Artist and I did not want to say goodbye to her.

Night lingers as day begins

My sisters mentioned another song, one called “Sara,” by Jefferson Starship. I put off listening to that one for days after Sarah’s death, and when I finally called it up, the Artist and I could hardly bear the lyrics: “I’ll never find another girl like you…. No time is a good time for goodbye.” 

 

Then the other day I picked up a small collection of poetry, ten poems by ten different poets, put together in a book by Roger Housden called Ten Poems to Say Goodbye. This may be the book I will finally finish and be able to add to my “Books Read 2020” list.

I am thankful

But life goes on, as it always does, and Thanksgiving will be here in two days. The Artist and I have each other! We have priceless family and friends! And we have received a flood of touching and very meaningful sympathy messages from a couple hundred people, many who knew Sarah for years and others in distant places who knew her only through my blog posts. We were unbelievably fortunate to have found puppy Sarah in the first place and then to have had her in our lives for so many years -- the best traveler, the best bookstore dog, and the best companion imaginable. 

 

I am very well aware of how blessed I am, what a wonderful life I have, and there are moments already when the Artist and I can make each other laugh, even over shared memories of Sarah. At the same time, for now, Sarah is my Pierre, and I am her dog: Everywhere I look, I see her absence.

Beautiful Morning, Best Dog, Wonderful Life

The other day I told the Artist I was going to do an online search for “best dog” to see if it turned up Sarah. Kidding, of course. Every dog deserves to be thought the best dog in some human’s life, right? But Sarah outdid herself on this morning.

 

I was sitting outdoors with my first cup of coffee, talking by phone with my son, Sarah companionably nearby. A monarch drifted past. It was a lovely, peaceful summer morning. Suddenly Sarah stood up, gazing alertly at something in the distance. She started trotting off, then broke into a lope. 

 

The animal I saw emerging from the weeds was too big and slow to be a rabbit. Oh, please, let it not be a skunk! No, duller in color….

 

I yelled, “Stop! Stop! Leave it!” She stopped. “Leave it! Come! Come!” A bit reluctantly but without any fuss, she came back to me -- as the porcupine waddled down toward the little, hidden-away, no-name stream. Porcupine! I had successfully called her off a porcupine! No need for an emergency trip to the vet and anaesthetic and a horrid quill-pulling session. Well, I’ve called her off deer more than once, and she’s always come back. What a good dog! No, a great dog! The best!

 

Later, on our way to one of the quiet back roads where Sarah and I go for morning walks before beginning our bookstore day, we passed a neighbor’s farm and saw him and a helper hurrying a new crop of Holstein feeder cattle out of the barn. Love to see those big, young ones in the open air! Stopped and watched a while, taking a couple photos to share with a ranching friend out in Arizona, and then continued a couple miles more to park by the side of the road and have a good dog walk. I walked, anyway. Sarah trotted, stopping frequently to sniff. I would love to know what she knows about who’s been there before us!

 

Time before my bank errand in Northport for a stop at Adelade’s roadside stand for a couple of Lori’s homemade scones and then another stop across from the playground by the marina to photograph the gorgeous summer morning, sun blindingly bright on the water.

 

Best of all, at the post office, a wonderful surprise waited! A letter from Copper Canyon Press and two copies of Jim Harrison’s Collected Ghazals, the first in “The Heart’s Work” series that is bringing all Jim’s poetry back into print. I am happy, happy, happy and can’t wait for the Artist to arrive (I’ve already turned his gallery lights on) so I can share with him all the glories of this glorious Wednesday morning. Not all days begin so auspiciously, but this is one for the memory book.

 

Adventures Close to Home: Cactus Hill

Adventure? Sarah is ready!

Sheltering in place in a ghost town allows for a great deal of fresh air and exercise. “We’re so lucky to live where we live!” my friend, neighbor, and hiking partner Therese says often of our lives here in Dos Cabezas. She was saying it before the coronavirus came along and says it now in heartfelt tones. I agree wholeheartedly! We are indeed lucky to be able to get outdoors to explore the mountains with our dogs!

Comforting neighbors

Therese and I also agree (and the Artist does, as well) that having cows for neighbors is very comforting. Calm bovine demeanor is contagious in the very best way. Cattle are not oblivious to our presence — and their alert looks hold a certain wariness when they see our dogs — but our little high desert pack is under control, and we pass by without the slightest molestation of livestock taking place. Not a single teasing bark! Good dogs!

See the little one?

Once again we followed the old mine road back, back where it becomes hidden from view from our cabin, making it difficult to explain to the Artist where we've been. Here (below) I’ll make the picture clearer by borrowing a photograph from our last adventure. That day we looked from our hillside ramble across the mine road to what would be our destination today, the place my friend calls Cactus Hill. In the following cropped image, I have zeroed in on the rocky hilltop.

Remember this view?

Our destination today

Here is the pack again, too: Mollie, Sarah, Buddy. The fourth dark object is not an additional dog but the jacket I removed and left down by the road as not needed for our sunny climb.

Being right up close, within touching distance, of rocky outcrops so like the highest peaks is exciting!

And I loved the raking morning light across the opposite slope, the one we’d explored earlier in the week.

Cactus Hill holds far more and larger prickly pear plants than we have down in the ghost town itself, and the higher we climbed, the thicker together the prickly pear, and the more challenging to duck around or squeeze between cacti.

Mollie was intrepid! She was like a mountain goat!

Sarah kept up pretty well, though, for a girl so old I’d almost left her home, knowing we would be climbing Cactus Hill. Then, no — I just couldn’t leave her behind, when she knew I was going out with the pack! And what a wise old girl she is: she was better than usual about drinking water when I offered it to her, and a couple of times she took advantage of large rocks to rest in the shade for a few minutes. 

Ferns! Astonishing!

For me, the hardest part was not climbing the slope or getting down on the ground to photograph plants but standing up again. No matter. It was worth it. I certainly had not expected to find ferns up there among the prickly pear, ocotillo, sotol, and agave. And then to see ferns and cactus right next to each other — that was even more astonishing! 

Ferns & cactus

Here is the view, looking down to the east, with the road continuing toward the old mine site.

Therese took my picture as we started down. The breeze was picking up by then and felt delicious.

Therese and dogs paused in their descent so I could catch up. I kind of hated to “return to earth” so soon but looked back long enough to take this shot illustrating where we had been. See those rocks on the right? Yes!!!

We were up there on the right!

Sarah and I were pretty tired by the time we said good-by to our friends and covered the last quarter-mile to our own winter home. Somehow, though, I have no feeling of “anticlimax” in the wake of one of these mountain adventures. Happy, satisfied, ready for an early lunch — but still open enough to the small and beautiful sights along the way, such as this one, lone, lovely little Mexican poppy blooming right in the middle of the road. What a lovely morning! Something cheery to write in my journal!

No Adventures, Mom?

Sarah looks and waits and hopes! Yes, Sarah is ready for another day of adventures. See her mooning at the back door, hoping for the appearance of cows! But alas, they are far away at present....

So let's do something else for a while. I will, anyway.

We've been homebound. I made a drawing (above) of an old dead mesquite by the end of the wash and added pen to the pencil a day or two later. If we were homebound more often, I would probably do more drawing, although, honestly, having the alternator on my car grow old and senile was not a decision we made. In any case, we had four days on a short leash, and so, time being too precious to waste, I got out my neglected pencils. There had been a couple of earlier attempts, one of them a quick sketch of Sarah on Valentine’s Day. Because she is our darling valentine every day of the year, after all.

Then there was an afternoon before the car got stubborn when we took our folding chairs out to Bonita Creek for a while, but as the breeze quickly cooled, our standstill came to an abrupt end. I have not gone back to finish this drawing, but at least it’s a start. The bark of the alligator juniper, like the weathered branches of old mesquite, seem actively to invite the picking-up of drawing tools. 

Back home. Three days in a row. So I thought I’d try something new, prompted by a friend’s comment on one of my blind profile sketches. Why not use that style for another purpose? Why not caricature? Faces in magazines are fodder for that mill, so here’s a cowboy caricature (with 'caricature' spelled wrong on the page -- my mind was elsewhere).

I would love to draw cows, but most of the time they refuse to hold still for even a minute.

Of course, a lot of what could be drawing time is occupied with reading — and it isn’t as if I “don’t have time,” after all. I’ve been enjoying seasonal retirement since December! But while no one has more than 24 hours a day, some of spent of necessity in sleep. And then different priorities lead us to make different decisions about how to spend our waking hours, and sometimes priorities conflict. 

Reading has always been important to me and probably always will be. I’ve already more than mention recent books I read by John McPhee and John C. Van Dyke. 

Another work of nonfiction absorbing me these days is Cowgirls: Women of the American West, an Oral History, by Teresa Jordan. Jordan interviewed and introduces “cowgirls” from many Western states, some of them ranching with husbands, some alone, others working rodeo — some having grown up on ranches and others who are transplants from the East. What they have in common is a love for working with animals, determined can-do attitudes, and strong attachment to their home ground. Cowgirls is a library book, so I’ll have to finish and return it soon. Meanwhile, I am living vicariously in each woman’s story Jordan has given me.

Halfway through now the Icelandic classic, Independent People, the book it was my New Year’s resolution to read this winter, I pick it up only at night, either before falling asleep or when I wake up in the middle of the night, but it’s definitely worthy to be considered a classic and has more than sustained my interest. I’m glad I finally got around to it. I found and purchased Independent People at the Friendly Bookstore in Willcox — not that I don’t have it back at my own bookstore in Northport, but I hadn’t brought that copy with me. It will be waiting for a spring customer, and I’ll be able to give a personal recommendation at last!

And then, on a recent visit to the library bookstore in Benson, I almost passed up a big paperback book on geology in the “FREE” box on the bench outside because it looked like a textbook, and most textbooks on geology seem written for someone other than me. I find them, as a rule, incredibly dry, full of unfamiliar technical terms, and telling me too much, too fast, too soon. They are not written in language meaningful to me. (Also, they are general rather than specific to a certain region, but that’s a general rather than a specific problem, even for me.) So the Artist and I went on inside, and each of us found treasures to carry home, as usual, but on the way out, I said, “Oh, all right!” and picked up Physical Geology, 6th edition, by Charles C. Plummer & McGeary,  am I glad I brought that home! 

(The only books to be regretted are the ones you consider and do not pick up. Anything you decide you don't want, one of your friends will.)

This geology book is not written for experts or even, it seems, for those aspiring to be professionals in the field but rather for the curious nongeologist eager to learn — and that is me! There are many excellent illustrations that work with the text (usually on the same page) to clarify each point the authors make. And they follow up their verbal and illustrated points with additional helpful analogies. For instance, in a discussion of general geological principles we come to “cross-cutting relationships,” and that principle is given as follows: 

The principle of cross-cutting relationships states that a disrupted pattern is older than the cause of disruption. A layer cake (the pattern) has to be baked (established) before it can be sliced (the disruption). 

- Plummer, Charles C. & David McGeary, Physical Geology, 6th edition

I’ll admit that I read the first of the two sentences in the passage quoted above three times, puzzling over it. How could a result precede a cause? Then I read the second sentence, and all became clear. Of course the pattern before the disruption comes before the disruption itself. Now I get it. Maybe I shouldn’t have needed the layer cake analogy, but it made all the difference, vastly cutting short my confusion. My mind works best with analogies, and Plummer and McGeary use good ones.

They also have true scientific minds, reminding readers that even geology, an apparently rock-solid body of knowledge, generates different views among its practitioners. 

We should emphasize that the picture we have presented [of igneous processes] is not an observation but a plausible interpretation of available data. 

Even plate tectonics theory doesn't make all geologists happy. 

No single process can satisfactorily account for all igneous rocks. Several hypotheses adequately explain some igneous rocks…
…
The theory of plate tectonics incorporates parts of previous theories…

Not in a class, I won’t be reading Physical Geology cover to cover. My more casual approach to a book like this (as to a field guide) is to turn to a section, study the illustrations and read the captions, dig into the accompanying text — and then try to relate it to what I see all around me here in Cochise County, AZ.

We also used our Sunday at home to move all the furniture and mop and scrub the cabin floor, then taking the scrubwater out to slosh onto the back porch to mop that down (it needed it), but how exciting can I make an account of spring cleaning, satisfying as it is on a sunny, warm day? But we always keep an eye on the cows, whenever we're at home in the cabin. 

Several of them visited quite close to our back door on Monday morning, and later on it made me happy to see one cow lying in the sunshine down in the warm sand of the wash, soaking up the light and heat the same way I do — well, similar to my way: I don’t lie down in the wash. (If only it had been closer so I could have used it for a drawing subject! Finally, a cow staying in one place and one position for a while!) I rather hoped the cow would go into labor so I could call the rancher and witness a calf being born, but no such luck.

But whether it’s a nursing calf, a line of cows in a stately, single-file parade, or one old girl taking a sunbath in the wash, the cattle fascinate me, and I never get tired of watching them. In my winter world, they are a priority in and of themselves.

Thus each day passes too quickly, even days not filled with touring the countryside for miles around. And it was good for us to spend three consecutive days without driving anywhere. We would never have gotten our spring cleaning done otherwise!

What Is Little? What Is Big?

Big beautiful bird!

Our winter life in Cochise County, Arizona, is not all adventures through mountains on primitive roads, as recent posts may seem to suggest. Many days are more quietly spent — at the library, doing laundry, or staying home reading. We still enjoy mountain views (the familiar ones here in the ghost town) but in relaxed, domestic surroundings, maybe fortified by a freshly baked apricot muffin or two. And as much as I thrill to the exciting times, I find contentment in the quiet hours, too. 

Some of the little things that give me pleasure are so small it’s almost embarrassing to mention them at all. For instance, there are my brightly colored plastic measuring cups from the dollar store, a necessary addition to the winter kitchen. Their happy colors please me, as does the aroma of muffins just coming out of the oven, the first cup of morning coffee, and the moment the sun breaks over the mountain horizon and floods the little ghost town with light. Making yogurt with fresh whole milk from Jersey cows or apricot muffins with fresh duck eggs — none of it feels ordinary or boring.

Following Tuesday’s very thrilling drive as far into the Dragoon Mountains as the frequently flood road that day permitted, our expedition on the following day was more modest in nature. A drive over to Benson took us once more to the peaceful monastery south of St. David, for a picnic beside the bird sanctuary pond and a visit to the little thrift shop. We have seen the peacocks on the grounds before, but Wednesday was the first day we saw a peacock fly up into a tree — and then, using its enormous, prehistoric, dinosaur-like feet the way a monkey would use its hands, climb up higher and higher into the branches. Quite the sight!

A different peacock (I’ve mentioned before that these are not shy birds) approached, clearly begging, and as we happened to have the last few nuts and scraps of our trail mix left, the Artist boldly overcame his aviphobia to feed a peacock! Historic moment! Not small at all!

I found two little things in the thrift shop that day that added to my happiness. The first was a small but not tiny clay pot. It seems easy to find tiny clay pots or enormous clay pots, but intermediate sizes are more elusive, so I was pleased. And the other little thing was even more surprising and delightful.

Here it is. It’s a Catholic missal in French, a sweet little leatherbound volume printed in Paris, and inscribed in French by the giver, someone’s Uncle Bernard (or at least someone who was known to the recipient as Tonton Bernard), in memory of Bernard’s visit to a couple ("vous deus," but unnamed) in Arizona in 2011. Bernard himself originally received the missal for holy communion in 1953, and a small sticker inside the back cover tells us that it came from the bookstore of the widow of Charles Morin in Sarrebourg. 

Little clues. Tantalizing scraps of a story. Is or was Bernard himself a monk? Did he visit the monastery? Did his Arizona host couple pass away since 2011? If the answer to these questions is no, how did the missal come to be in the monastery thrift shop where I found it?

Cows, now, are not little animals. They are quite large. And yet, their presence does not loom as large on the excitement scale as does that of horses (for me) or a mountain lion (excitement I don’t need in the yard). Still, I like coming home to cows … hearing their voices nearby in the morning … meeting them on the road on my way to the mailbox. It’s a little thing, an encounter with neighborhood cows, but it always makes me smile. 

Sunny morning. Cow down the driveway. Silver cardinal on the television antenna. Even laundry day begins with reasons to smile.