A Poetics of Place And Definition of Family
Seventeen amazing years ago, I moved to Alaska, a place I had inhabited always, first in my heart, and in my soul; Alaska was a place I knew in my mind's eye for a very long time. Coming here was an idea whose longing had a life of its own and was placed inside my awareness as an urge of migration and a story of journey. I really don't remember when, or more importantly, why. Perhaps through this run at reason or rhyme I shall reach some kind of opening of heart, mind and spirit about what it means to be here and why I came. Alaska for me is not just a place or a geographic measurement in space and time, it’s a circle of dreams of ancient life, which demands to be acknowledged in a multidimensional arena I call Turtle Island. As I write this post, I make my intentions clear to myself; I intend to dream my run at life, and to publish in time this accounting of my moments, most importantly, for and with my self. Perhaps through this process I shall come to some ideas or philosophy that I can share, though this blending of journal, poetry, dreams, visions and storytelling.
In her recent interview with NPR's Scott London, Terry Tempest Williams speaks of a "politics of place", and a "poetics of place." Does one translate into the other? She makes the comment that writing is a process of answering questions and so it is. What stories do we tell that evoke the sense of place that stirs inside us and opens out into the vast landscapes of change that surround us now. And how can we write about it in such a way that our audience has an experience which helps to open their hearts to and for the land. She asks a personal question: How do we make love to the land? I have an answer to that, and it’s by redefining our sense of what community is and who and what we include as part of that community. And later in the interview, Terry comments on this very thing. We include all life forms, rocks trees and the shape of land and rivers, the interrelationships between species and the balance that evokes in nature. Only then can we be as deeply accountable as we really need to be. Home is where we have a history. I am not sure why exactly, but Alaska's history with me began the minute I was born in California. Williams states that perhaps the most radical act we can commit (in this day and age) is to stay home. In my case, it was to GO HOME. Home to the dogs, home to the cold and winter's dark as well as to the endless light of summer. Home to the ravens and wolves and moose, home to the great stretches of woods and plains and cold-boiling muddy rivers- home to the place that Alaskans call, The Interior. Terry also made a most auspicious and truthful statement when she said, "Its recognizing the pattern of things, almost a feeling of place before you even see it." I have decided that this is absolute. For me it wasn't just Alaska, it was Arizona and the southwest too. I was there before I was there and here before I was here..... I imagine one way of finding some kind of effabilty is to say that striking up a sense of intimacy within seconds of "being" somewhere is my ideal. In my case, somehow, poetry and dreams always precedes an arrival in a new physical place. Indeed, my teachings and wisdoms tell me that the physical travels into reality from realms of dreams and thought. So one could say that new geographies spring from the deepest places of the self and soul.
I think in our understanding of human relationships to the natural world, it’s very important to have the desire and motivation to seek both the unity that this relationship evokes, and yet accept how individual this experience is for each human being. For me, dogs have been a huge part of my relationship with both the wild natural world and with other humans. They have been both inspiration and interpreters, going ahead of me into new adventures of trail and tails, literally dragging me into the wild, and provoking in me new avenues of thought and belief. When words get in my way I go to dogs, I go to a dogs world, where talking comes and goes, but the world of waggy tails and loving gazes and deep understanding an acceptance takes me as far away from words as I want to go. They will listen and are intuitive beyond belief- but more importantly, they know how to perceive well, feel fully, and live profoundly in the moment.
How do I explain the dogs? How do I give them to paper or get them down in adjectives? This is at the very least, a task that begs me to try. Hopefully it’s a freeing process. It is a driving to find a way to show this way of life as one of a great love and commitment. To describe my dogs and my relationship with them is a great responsibility, in that my life and loyalty to them seems to own me. Living with dogs generationally is a bit different than having a single pet dog. To have a continuous bloodline that flows through generations of a family is an amazing experience. One finds faces and mannerisms, personality traits and all manner of other inherited aspects passed on from one generation to another. When they look at me, they really look at me. Or I should say, into me. With narrow eyes and masks or goggles, silver grey or blonde, red or yellow-black or white or both. Even their inherited markings seem to comment on life; as unique as the stripes on a Zebra or spots on a panther, they watch every thing you do from the point of view of now, yet with a rich and coded history that has shaped us more than we may know. They are bright and sensitive, and incredibly observant. They sometimes approve of me with such enthusiasm that it’s hard not to be totally joyful with them. They never disapprove; although they can scowl and draw down their eyebrows at one another. Anybody that thinks dogs are unconditionally immediately accepting has not met my dogs, or sled dogs or northern dogs, whatever you want to call them. They have intelligence and judgment that most of the time, is overlooked, and an intuition that has saved my life out in the deep woods or on the great frozen Tanana River. Author Gary Paulsen has described them so well in his book, Winterdance. A book that describes not just the dogs, but somehow he pins it down- their place in the field of my reality. This is a book I can never find because I always loan it out and nobody will ever give it back to me. His books Dog Song and Wood Song are also important to me for similar reasons. The experiences Paulsen writes of reveal a unique and intimate knowledge of multiple levels of awareness and communion between humans and animals- not the usual literary task, or pitter patter of pet talk. Not a subject that many can articulate so well. The relationship with dreams and waking is the twin star of my being and the table of time and reason upon which I set my runs. My runs with dogs seem to run me at life, and the very fiber of being is set from them . Just how thin the veil is between waking and dreaming realities for tribal and or spiritually aware beings is apparent in Paulsen's writings.
Another writer who speaks and writes to this level of reality is N. Scott Momeday in The Way To Rainy Mountain. Momeday describes his grandmother Aho- who even though blind, had a distinct and complex idea and vision of Kiowa traditional lands, knew them in her minds eye better than some with perfect vision. This is what Terry was talking about! This is physic and cellular, the knowing of place flows in our blood like a trail of knowing in our DNA. A deeply sensory and yet critical explanation for the knowing of certain places I have visited and seemed to respond to in unusual ways. It is a far better and more dimensional idea than chalking it up to "that déjàvou " feeling. It goes beyond déjàvou- It is a place where one imagines and sees and dreams and knows. For years I imagined and dreamed coming to Alaska, for an eternity it seems I starred at the map on our hallway wall. Every trip to the restroom we walked by Alaska. Every book report or science project was dogs and time and place. And then one actually takes the journey, a slow and long approach through time and distance. Finally arriving, to this place, I found I knew it. And in some ways, already very well. I discovered I could anticipate its moods and intuit its changes. But I always listened politely, yet passively when another who has been "here" longer describes the test and temper of the land and weather. Another writer who articulates my unspoken perceptions of place is my friend Alma Villanueva, In her many works of life’s blood. Both in poetry and in each new expansive novel. One of my most favorite Alma sayings is: "I, woman, give birth: and this time to myself." This is what we are all doing every day, in all ways. Giving birth to ourselves, and I might add, to the world. By sensing our place in the world and taking a stand. Alma's writing always takes a stand and dares anyone to cross it. And if they do cross it, they better beware, they may become, good grief, more conscious about how to become, a Human Being, in right relations to the word and world. Alma taught me that places have spirits and spirits have personalities and that when the sun rises, it hums.
I like to call my dogs Interior Alaskan Village Dogs. In reality, my dogs carry just the genetic base of those old original and indigenous dogs in their lineage. Such dogs as unique bloodlines, as a pure landrace, are now extinct, as are all of the original native dogs of North America with the exception of the Eskimo or Inuit dogs. My Medicinedogs are sled dogs from a family of bloodlines stretching back continuously to 1906. The first dog in the written record was Bella, a Coastal Eskimo dog with some wolf heritage from the Kotzebue Sound area of Western Alaska. She was eventually bred to a dog from Russia. Subsequent bloodlines from the old Yukon villages and stories of rafting dogs down rivers abound. Recently modern racing sprint dogs and distance dogs have been added to the old working dog lines. Old Redington dogs, a Jeff King dog and others, have added to the bloodlines of my Medicine dogs. The first of these dogs and the founder of their lineage came to me in 1989, after a series of dreams and visions by a particular and peculiar lake, in Northern California. It’s a strange place to start a journey to Alaska, but strange is good I assume, now days.
This lake is a place few could find or at the time anyway, few would want to. You cannot drive to it, you must hike through thick brush and thump the ground for snakes-they need to know you are coming. The thick sugar pines smell good enough to eat, and the winds will stay gentle for your affection, but will turn on you should you show disrespect by your haste and lack of acknowledgement to place, you must be aware of how you are relating to the land there. You would be wise to take your time to greet each tree of the gateways, to honor them by placing your forehead on their surface. These gateways are watched over by two large trees, and to me they are very obvious. The Indian Paintbrush is a lovely red, delicate, and only occasionally can be seen here and there, below a giant rock or in the company of other wild flowers in the spring. I can close my eyes now, and I am there on what e call the Mother Rock, the breeze contains the personality and essence or spirit of the place. I am there with my dear friend, a writer and poet and native person of the earth. She is a teacher, seeker, lover of words and the earth like me. We are there seeking dreams and openings, each other's company. I am hot and dry and in a hurry during my first visit here. And as soon as we arrive down to the lake's edge after a short but steep hike down to a stone bowl that holds the sacred waters, I clumsily dive off the huge Mother Rock. I sink into lake weeds and driftwood, like a stone. And there I stay. I cannot rise to the surface no matter how hard I try- I start to panic. I wave my arms and push my feet against the bottom as hard as I can. I am 32 and strong, lean, limber. My long black hair starts to wave mermaid like around me. I am so afraid. I am stuck. I am loosing oxygen. I am too cold to pass out, instead I am wider awake than I have ever been. I start to experience a different time. Or I have stopped time. I would say time moved away in all directions like a star of light, and I was caught in the middle of a timeless moment. And then, suddenly, I am released, and surge up to break the surface, free of the grip of this lake, a very feminine and determined lake I might say! I explode into breath and shiver with cold. I climb out and my friend with her dark eyes simply look at me with some sort of amusement and an unspoken "I told you so".
"Yes", she had said earlier... " She will extract blood from you"............ What did I expect?
My immediate response was one of fear, then wonder. Of course, the wake up call was duly noted. All the spirit of the place was doing was to simply wake me up. To become present in the moment is something life demands, nature demands, another being demands. And its darn dangerous in the wild to ignore this. To wake me up to myself, to a world beyond what we normally see, to connect us with the spirit that moves though all things, was a vital move on the part of all aspects of the experience. It gives life immediacy and a super reality that reinforces both the physicality of the earth and its blueprint within nonphysical realms. I discovered the Law of Attraction on that warm rock. I discovered that if I lay still with my back to the sun and my wet body melting into the stone's structure, and let thoughts move away from the shock of my watery engagement, that I was open. Wide open. I stood at the edge of the water and began to send my voice in a clear continuous tome, across the surface of the water. Yes, I could hear her reply with the softest notes. I was wide open to the soft and gentle breeze that played across the skin of my back, open to many experiences and realities and interrelationships that form the basis of what happened next...
That evening the full moon rose above a huge cloud mass into the clear sky, stars big and bright, sparkling into my eyes and setting me up for dreams to come. The dreams that only a high altitude and clear clean sweet sugar air can give you. We slept, two independent ladies looking for gates and passageways to home, to places where only souls can go. Two native woman, creative and powerful, moved by a passion for the earth and her wild creatures and the black night. From across the lake there was a wonderful eruption of flute music- we had distant company and it was perfect for the moon and our mood. We slept in huge open fissures on the mother rock, which were filled with sand and amazingly soft and comfortable to sleep on. With my back to the stone of the earth, and my gaze filled with stars, I fell fitfully asleep and dreamt many dreams of the distant past and far future. And of a white dog. A white dog that followed the two of us all around our dreams and into the following day, a ghostlike image I could see only out of the corner of my eye. But I could sense him, sense the presences of him............
The dog was everywhere. He seemed to follow us as we hiked up to the frog pond spring to meet the frog prince, a keeper of the waters that fed the lake. The white dog was behind us. We drank from the waters and splashed our faces, offered prayers and I left a pinch of tobacco there. The white dog was there, he had a curled tail like a husky. If I looked directly at him he would vanish, I could not see him at all- but if I glanced my gaze to the side, I could see his outline plainly, and if I closed my eyes totally, I could ear him breath...
I asked my friend, "Is this your dog you spoke of, the one that died some time ago?" The husky and wolf mix? I told her of my dreams and sensing of this dog. She was hardly surprised, and usually took my experiences in stride as she was used to far more amazing spiritual experiences of her own. She was a strong mentor and a vigorous supporter of woman and especially strong creative women who knew how to dream.
"No" she replied, "That dog had some markings on him, he did have lot of white on him though." She looked at me, into me, thinking and squinting her eyes against the sun. She used her wide flat palm to shade her eyes. Her eyes were a deeper green than mine. Dark and wondering. She glanced around, and shrugged. She mentioned that we would see the dog again. I was curious. I did not sense him on our hike out of the lake and back to the campground, nor did I feel him as we packed that old Land Cruiser with our gear. I was quiet on the drive home to Santa Cruz. It was hard to talk over the sound of that engine anyway, which hummed and clanged about like a bear was under the hood rummaging for garbage. I thought about all the experiences we had had at the lake. The dreams, the animals and spirits. In the beginning, I had a visit from a lovely butterfly, with wings like stained glass windows. The butterfly landed on the back of my hand and I gently handed her to my friend. The butterfly stayed with her for several minutes, pumping life force into her wings. And my dear friend had called eagles over the lake just before we left. We would have more visits here in the years to come; she would give me great gifts and also great responsibilities. This is a lake I always return to in my dreams and in silent moments. I stepped into a different arena of probability there. My prayers of traveling to Alaska were gifts I stepped into although it was a long time before I actually made the physical move. I know now that time is a very relative thing, as is space. The perception of each is dependent on the actual consciousness that is creating and perceiving the manifestation of both.
Recently a good friend who runs sled dogs too, told me that he believed that "the right dog comes to the right person at the right time." And I believe him in every way a person could. What does "run dogs" mean? For me anyway, it means to be a musher, to have sled dogs that pull a sled, and its what you do. You have sled dogs and you run them for recreation, or for sport as in sprint or distance racing, or its your business and you give rides and tours in the winter to supplement your income. Perhaps you rescue them from shelters and or bad situations and you train them for a new home. Or if you are like me, you have done a little of it all and mainly you just have to. To be behind a team of my dogs is my dream and my life. To have my dogs and to love them and have them love me back is the one of the nicest gifts I can imagine. What they do for and with me is amazing. Training them brought me to the realization that I have more to learn from my team than the other way around. Our interactions are based on trust and love and respect. I might have days where I disagree with that, but mainly its the truth. The dogs in no way disagree with it! They are a group of individuals who are from a single litter, with the exception of a grandmother dog and two granddaughters. The rest are a group of uncle brothers and one aunty-sister. Recently Great Grandpa Miko has passed away. I miss him every second of my life. But at the same time, I feel his presence in moments and times where I am quiet and not thinking too much..............
After I returned from my first camping trip to the lake, full of ideas and creative energy, full of dreams and excitement for life, I picked up my little boy from his grandparents house and we went home to our little apartment. We were happy to see each other and I looked forward to telling him all about my adventure, although the white dog slipped my mind and hid from me in a shadowy and elastic world of visions and dreams, where I did not venture to go to retrieve his image again for a very long time. I was full of what was before me, my son who was seven, and finishing junior college. The university was looming up for the following fall, and my little boy needed guidance and raising. We were busy doing things one does with little boys, going to the park and the beach and day care, and visiting with little boy cousins. He held on tight to our little black Chihuahua, Tari as we walked in the front door. Kids were outside having kid adventures and the boy put the dog down and zoomed back out to adventure it up with the rest of the pack of apartment kids. We were not home more than ten minuites when I recieved a phone call. It was a woman, I did not recognize her voice although she spoke as if she knew me.
"Ah, this is Joy, and I have your phone number here."
"Apparently, yes."
"Well, are you the person I met at the bargain barn?"
"Hmm, I dunno, I do go to the bargain barn pretty regularly."
"Well, you gave me your phone number and your social security number and your drivers license number, and just about every other number a person could have."
"I did?" I couldn't imagine why on earth I would do that.
"You admired my dogs and said that if I were to ever breed a litter you would like to have one."
I am very confused at this point. Dogs? I had no idea what this person was talking about. I was about to conclude that this was some kind of confused person, although a sincere sounding one. The woman didn't sound deranged at all, just mistaken. But then came the next bit of information that made everything crystal clear, immediately.
"You know, I have the white dogs. The one has blue eyes. She has had a litter of pups, I'm selling them for seventy five dollars a piece. If you want one you can come out and get one." She proceeded to tell me where she lived while I was almost dancing to finally tell her I knew who she was and I knew the dogs!! These were the dogs I dreamed of. These were the dogs whose geriatric years were spent walking from the bassinet to the cradle to the play pen of my babyhood. These were the dogs of my dreams. For the first years of my childhood I had thought a husky was a very furry, tottering, stiff dog with cataracts! But I did remember being at the Goodwill Bargain Barn! It was Joy, a distant cousin...the lady with the dogs, over the years, living in, Arizona, New Mexico, New York and finally California. But the dogs, oh what amazing dogs! Beautiful snow white athletic husky dogs, from a long lineage of dogs whose history and heritage stretched back to times of migration and wooly mammoths, to the snow and ice and the wild north lands of our continent. Like me I thought. Like my ancestors and the ancestors of the dogs, who ran through time together like streams flowing together to form rivers and finally merged together in the flood plains of the present. These were those dogs.
"Oh yes, I do remember, you are Joy, and you have the dogs!" I could almost hear her shrug and roll her eyes. Joy told me to call back in a couple of days and come see the pups. I would come to find out many things about Joy, her sly sense of ironic humor, her poets heart, her love for the dogs. I was excited but hesitant at he same time. I lived in a small apartment with no fenced yard. How was I going to care for a puppy? I knew my young son would relish the pup- but how would little Tari take to a puppy three times her size? My mind began to rumble and ramble on all the reasons I should not get a puppy, while in my heart, I knew exactly what I was going to do..
The Right Dog Comes to The Right Person at the Right time....
What does it mean when something happens that you just are not expecting? Memories of the past weeks vanished as the ongoing drama of life captured me and held my attention fully. The sun danced through Eucalyptus trees, imported long ago from Australia, they scented the coastal air as we drove down the cool June day, as I tried to remember where Joy lived. In Australia, the eucalyptus has been the tree of folklore where children sang of the “Kookaburra in the gum tree.” Aboriginal people there enjoyed the sweet flakes of the manna gum. Medicine is found in the Eucalyptus oils which have been used to cure everything from an upset stomach to a nasty laceration. Doctors and tribal cultures have both used its gum and oils as a healer. The Eucalyptus provided the early Australian settler materials for buildings, implements, and desperately-needed fuel. Its versatility was virtually unchallenged by anything else on the Australian continent. Established in California during the gold rush, it has grown huge and towers over roadways and across once bare hillsides. My mind wondered if in Australia, wild Dingoes took shade under the large protective trees. In my mind I saw them lounging in under long-leafed trees, pawing at flies and digging into the red sandy soil for moisture and a cooler place to lie. At that moment I was pulled from my daydream as my mother and son and I arrived in a large gated driveway. The gate was dilapidated, but closed. However I could see the white pups lounging under a large cluster of eucalyptus trees, digging deep impressive holes into the root structure and under the oversized dog house which sat cockeyed on the uneven ground. The pups blue eyed, snow white mother was loose on the grounds, as was their grandmother, a small white furry dog who was fully blind.
Earlier in the week I had visited the property alone to choose my pup. Then as I stood at the locked gate, all the pups but one had clamored to reach me, crying and pawing and excited, little puppy tails wagging as fast as they could. One lone pup sat on the top of their little hill above the dog house- and looked at me with disinterest. No one seemed to be around, and I almost left. But finally a man appeared who came down from a house up on a large grassy hill, and talked to me. I noticed a very rundown motor home was parked closer to the gate. He said Joy had gone to town and wouldn’t be back any time soon. The lone pup was a bit taller and less furry than the others, although his coat was dense. He looked like a white Dingo puppy. The man was very rugged, his face ruddy and bearded. He wore tattered clothing, shorts and a stained undershirt. I pointed to the pup on his little hill. He smirked, “Oh yeah, Mr. Independent, that’s the one you like?”
“Yes,” I replied, “Could I hold him?” I was handed an armful of resentful pup, dirty and clawing to get down. I put him on the ground and he ran off to find his mother, who was no doubt making a point of hiding from her rowdy brood at this point. Sharp teeth and nails are natural weaning components of puppyhood; female dogs with maturing puppies are well motivated to save their own hides, literally, and Lady Blue was no exception. As it turned out Joy had wisely taken the mother dog with her to town. My chosen pup ran all over the place. He eyed me now and again and finally when I sat to watch him in the sun, he came to me. He took in my scent and wagged a little, then was off, happy to find an old dirty bone which he chewed and buried and then dug up and chewed again. I was beginning to enjoy his antics when an old Ford pick up truck rolled into the drive. A mean-tempered man got out and yelled. I stayed where I was. He had the ugliest expression on his face I had ever seen on anyone, and my shoulder's shook with an involuntary spasm of fear. The man who I stood next to told the guy to come back when Joy was home. The angry man was obviously very drunk, and he slurred some curse words, leaned over and grabbed two pups, the largest furriest of the males. I watched as if I were in a trance. Suddenly my little pup was in my lap, looking at the scene, very concerned. His larger brothers had screamed in pain to be lifted by the fur of their backs. They were thrown onto the front seat and the truck pealed out and left us all in a huge cloud of black exhaust and smoke. The two of us looked at each other and beard guy simply said, “Joy told him he could only have one pup.”
And so a week later I had returned to fetch the little guy, with reinforcements of a mother and a son. I didn’t want to encounter the puppy thief by myself. This time Joy was at home, that is, in her motor home where she lived with her husband, apparently he was from New York and was a wanted person. He was asleep looking extremely old and harmless, on the big bed in the back, where the pups apparently had been born. We entered the motor home and sat around the cluttered table. My mind was busy wondering where the little pup was. Most of them seemed to be gone. Blue and Kasha sat around the table with us, just like people. Joy made an announcement; “Its good you chose that particular pup, he is the only one not spoken for, AND, I want 75.00 bucks for him, in cash.”
“Oh, that’s good, I liked his personality a lot….. where is he?” We could haggle money later; I only had $ 25.00 anyway!
“He is outside running around like crazy with this sister, Isha.” Joy had an interesting history and had once been a teacher in the southwest. She spoke well, and in the future, we would become good friends and her letters were fun and full of animal anecdotes. At that point, however, we didn’t know one another well. We all climbed outside again and I could see the two pups, running for glee around the huge green grassed area between motor home and house on the hill. They paid no attention to us at all until they saw my son, a real dog lover and its as if they could read it in him immediately. They swooped down on him and then all three took off running. It was great to see, boy and dogs, having room to run and play and chase. I still hear my son’s laughter in my ears to this day, and now years later- it is echoed by generations of puppies and dogs and boys that came after, and ran and chased and laughed. Its as if the blueprint for my life was set at that very moment, under the blue California sky and in the brisk spring air.
We spoke and visited for a while, Joy told us the story of how Kasha, the pup’s grandmother dog, had become blind. Apparently the sleeping husband had given her some rich chocolate, causing a diabetic coma that the vet was skeptical she would come out of, but she had. Joy was a sharp cookie with her dogs- had used this herb and that herb, and carrots. And then we found out that the terrible angry and drunk man who had taken two pups, was the owner of the pups sire, Auggie. Auggie was a huge Brut of a dog, I never saw him, but remember clearly the description of him. Big white dog. In later years, Joy added that he was furry, friendly, and very quiet. And then it was time to leave. I was excited beyond belief. I was finally going to have a dog of my own, a real sled dog. A big dog, a real dog. I kept telling myself, this is a real dog. I really wasn’t thinking of my son’s pleasure in the pup, or what my little black Chihuahua, Tari, would think either. I was just happy. Joy took the 25.00 dollars. She looked pleased. But Lady Blue was anxious. She had seen this scenario before. As we climbed into Mom’s van she began to howl. And I will never forget that howl.
Multi-Species Kinships: My Family
In an essay titled; "Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction" Deborah Rose Bird discusses her book of the same title, and what issues it hopes to address. Humans and their relationship to nature is at the crux of her discussions. When she quoted Aboriginal (Ngiyampa), Paul Gordon saying; "Some animals can't just be classified as fauna...They are my people, my relations" - my heart perked up. I immediately was captured and at attention. For dogs, in this case the Australian Dingo is a key participant in her book on the 6th great extinction here on planet Earth. One of her aboriginal teachers named Old Tim, was a Dingo person, that is, his dreaming was Dingo. He told her, "Dog's a big boss, you gotta leave him. No more killing." He was addressing the fact that Dingoes are regularly poisoned, shot and assailed in any other manner of ways, much like the Wolf in Alaska. Deborah has invited her readers to bring their lives into the discussion, and so here I am. My dreaming is wolf, and as wolf is a dog, any dog is my dreaming really. I truly love all dogs, wild or not, and really am fascinated by Wolves and Dingoes. Its hard for me to talk about what they do to dogs and wolves here in Alaska- I refuse to go into the details here. This is the story of my dogs and I would rather concentrate on my relationship with them and hope that writers like Deborah can talk or story some sense into humankind. But her book is a very important one, in that it visits a concept that humanity needs to pay attention to: The very fact of our kinship with all life on the planet. When I look at the photos of Dingoes in her book I am very moved, I see the faces of my sled dogs, the faces of wolves, the faces of coyotes and foxes. And what does she see as an answer to finding a way forward through this world crisis? That we must keep asking questions can only be addressed by the process of facilitating the flourishing of other creature’s lives. Some might call it conservationism, or ecological humanities, but in my world I say <strong>all life is sacred. If we all were to live life by this code, we would automatically be facilitating the flourishing of the earth and all her creatures without having to rethink our place in nature.
And so my dreaming is dog. And like some aboriginal peoples down under, dog is my relative. Dingoes there are sometimes wild and some are domestic. Some live with people and some live in the bush. And the descendants of that white puppy are out in my yard as I write, howling to distant wolves and waiting for our next run. The ground is white with new snow and the temperatures are warm for this time of year, about plus fifteen degrees.
The puppy we have been dancing around in our discussions, (back in 1989) had a bath and turned truly snow white. The yellow dirt from beneath the Eucalyptus trees washed out of his coat and ran in a long dirty stream down the tub, not unlike blood. His coat was thick and soft and smelled like shampoo later as he played in front of my apartment. Both the cat and the black Chihuahua were interested and watched him for a long time. The boy had the hose going, and the puppy walked under the hose lifting it up on his back as the cat swatted at the water. I sat in the sun and watched too. I thought about a dream I had that first night as I mostly lay awake and worried if he was going to wake up and pee on the rug. Finally I had slept waking only once and remembering. In my dream the pup was a big dog. And the big dog spoke to me fact to face, and revealed his name; Moki. And that’s was all to the dream. Just a big polar bear face and he spoke one word. Moki. What the heck did Moki mean?
The next night I was deep in sleep, and I awoke to a strange sound. I couldn’t figure it out. It sounded like a woman singing or crying, I wasn’t sure. I became alarmed. I sat up and looked around; the sound was coming from inside my room. At the foot of my bed, a sound emerged that rose up quietly, it was sad and lovely, remote and primitive. The puppy was in a deep sleep. And he was howling. A soft quiet and high pitched howl. I was relieved! I will never forget that sound, nor did I ever hear him or another dog make quite a sound like that since. What was he dreaming in his young puppy heart?
Back further and Straight Ahead
As a child, I was too many races and cultures, too long of leg, hair too black eyes too round like an owls, and I moved too many places. Would I ever settle down and be still? Parents, grandparents and teachers wondered. I was singing, reading, drawing pictures, joyriding horses, and had way too many animals running in and out of my circle. My shoulders were too brown in the summer and one grandma for sure thought I was a virtual circus. The other knew I was a free spirit. As for me, it never occurred to me at such a young age that I needed to know who or what I was, for definitions could never catch up with me then. I never knew what to say when someone asked me what I was, I was too many things to care. But that little me – little me never cared, I was too many things to know.
And so now I am a dog yard and 22 sled dogs. Not as many as in a lot of yards here in Alaska, but if you ask, I will say, it’s what I do and how I dream. We hit the trails a lot this winter. Looking back from the wet new green of early summer, I am in a new place in my life and planning new things. And Minka came back early this morning! She went off missing yesterday and we have had weird thunder. The kind of thunder that roams across the sky like it’s pouring through a nasally funnel, for several minutes at a time and really moans like the Earth is rolling over and groaning in her sleep. Then a loud boom - so loud it sounds like we are being bombed by nature. And I worry, pretty soon this Earth is going to wake up and be really pissed. Anyway, Minka was worried about the sky and the earth and she was ready for an adventure. But after all my worry and restless night, there she was as I raced outside as soon as I realized I was awake. A little Dingo dressed in morning dew and stiff and sleepy as I clipped her great grandmother Inuk, to her box, (Alaskan for dog house) and raced over to smother her with kisses. I made over her and told her how worried I had been. She rolled her eyes and looked over to the big puppy pen. Her own grand pups were happy to see her and ever asking for their breakfast. But Minka just yawned and looked at me. All the dogs gazed at me in wonder. What was the big deal?
Okay so my Grandma had been right about me. But it led me to a diverse and varied string of jobs, including running my own outreach program called Medicinedogs. The idea of using animals to help kids is certainly not new, but taking that concept of kinship back into the fold of the native community and to the community at large was something that occurred naturally and started with my fist sled dog, a big white husky dog named Moki. He worked with kids who showed up at the house back in Felton, California. My son’s friends, my grandkids, and my Godson, all had that special interaction of unconditional love and a playful nudging toward life and nature. Moki sure was a special guy, in looks alone he turned heads and was a presence unto himself. At 85 pounds he was big enough to drag us through rough and skinny times, and always he was there looking into our souls. My sister Becky said he was like a Dolphin, enlightened.
He was a Boss Dog if there ever was one. But he rarely barked, was really very quiet, and had a deep gaze that seemed to suggest that the only thing he really required in return for being his amazing self was integrity and honesty. He brought that out in people. He broke the ice for people, the way his ancestors had and descendants would, break out a snow laden trail. Suddenly the path would be passable, the conversation easy. The old time Eskimo dog in him would barely wiggle that tightly curled tail when he gave out his kisses. As much as he brought a healing to the table, his vocal “woo – woos” were reserved for long stretches of fogged in beach. There he could run and have the freedom he so desired to be one with his own self, while sniffing the rich surf laden salty sand where a hundred dogs had just passed. At some point I stopped worrying for him as he became a small white speck in the distance, shrouded and disappearing in the hazy morning mist. I imagined we were already in Alaska and he was pulling me up a winter trail, in the cold of winter. We may have been on a beach in California, but between my dreams and his DNA, we were already on our way to the great land. The dog, my son, and I, were a tribe, a unit, a field. Often we walked with my mom, my other best friend. She lived with a variety of familiars, Moki’s Daughter Jaya, His mate Kesha, a black border collie name Shanti, and a frightened-fearsome German Sheppard rescue named Mahesh. On the beach at dawn, it was kinship at its best. Little did I know that two white dogs on the beach at sunrise was a step to a place I longed for but had no understanding of why. A first step that led away from home, and to home, at strangely the same time.
Today in Alaska, I am watching out the window at our current litter of pups, at four months they are rangy, small and racy. I’m excited. I get to watch the whole litter grow up! Right outside my kitchen doors, they are at that age where work is growing and playing and roughhousing and fighting. They pair off, digging and pulling up bugs and roots and then protecting these spots with a relish and passion that I see in everything they do. My now grown up and married son, who has moved to Alaska over a year ago has built them a huge fenced in area that we call the turn out. Each year it gets bigger and the pups have to share it with adults who take turns playing and chasing balls in the shade of spruce and alder. It is summer in the Interior, and the days are sunny and cloudy and raining and smoky sometimes all together. Its warm and the big dogs are heaving off their winter wool in huge messy clumps. They all look like pigpen in various stages of rising fluff. Some of them look at the departing fur with interest and the pups jump and bite at the bits swept up by the breezes. I take them for “puppy” walks and have put in a path around these three acres. They get a sense of the forest now, and we have turns to take and new things to sniff. I give them directional commands as we make our little turns, and they hear them and already know that “haw” means left, “gee” means right and straight ahead means quite messing around and lets get moving! They enjoy this walk with me. I enjoy it too. It gives me an opportunity to bond with them, and evolve my relationship to each of them as individuals and a group. A group who will spend their life as a team with me, pulling me through beauty and the quiet of our place. A place that is in their hearts and blood, on the trail of their ancestors’ and mine. They are eight generations from Moki and Kesha, and they walk a path left to them by rights from thousands of generations of dogs who came with my ancestors across the Bering Straights, were shaped by thousands of years of natural selection, and who also descend from the more recent immigrants dogs who came to this great land from Europe, Russia, and other places on our world. You could say that they are the most rightful tenants of this land that exist. They have earned that in my mind and heart.
Fall of 2011 updating the bloodline...
Now as I update this in my new blog, I am into a new time and space, and a new place of heart and mind. The study of consciousness has brought me back to the idea of relationship and interaction. Both have changed since I last wrote the above. Now the many generations of dogs descended from Moki have had a winters of running and since the birth of our latest (2010) litter, the older dogs are training the pups. These seven new young dogs have exceeded my expectations. Since the fall of last year, we have gone from puppy walks in the forest to running in small 4 dog teams, maybe 4 to six miles, and then bumped up to 6 dogs running 12 miles or so. The dogs really merge with me now, and each have developed such different and unique personalities. Over time we have gone from little dogs to big dogs and back to small, albeit tall, with the yearlings. In my next segment i will attempt to describe the breeding and lineage from about the 1970's to the present. Kasha to Blue, to Moki to Shunka to Miko to Inuk to Kazi to Tamara and Minka and Agata, to Moon, to the Seven. (Kumo, Gypsy, Saqqara, Jetta Smart, Amaya, Yoshi, and Tuka!)
This is a circle, not a straight line...
I never expected Kazi to be bred, but that is another story involving many other people, so for now I will say that he has turned out to be an amazing sire, grandsire, and now great grand sire...He is kind of in the middle for a discussion of the lineage - and so we can branch out into the past and to the present. He is a 62 lbs boy who can do it all. He is a lead dog, and an all round packing and hunting dog as well. He once pulled a musher and sled with 500lbs and three other dogs into Fairbanks from Standard Creek in one night. It was a feat of strength for sure. Kazi is a smart dog, and is a good friend to have berry picking if there are bears about. He closely resembles the original native village dog of interior Alaska. At least that is what some folks tell me, Native elders and those who have spent time in the villages, have married into them so to speak. Once when I took Miko to a language workshop in New Minto, a native elder came hurrying over to my truck exclaiming, "my grandpa had a dog like that..."
I was so pleased with that I could have just busted!
My Miko
Kazi, full name Kama Kazi is the offspring of my big girl Inuk Suk. She is 10 years old now and still runs fine with the team. In 2005, I bred my first Alaska born litter since 1970, to a Reddington dog, which had been given to a neighbor after a long mid distance junior race carrier. Tuggs was a great dog to balance our Inuk's tall rangy (70lbs) frame. Tuggs was a great little 45lbs dog, tough as they come and a nice lead dog. He was descended from dogs of the famous Joe Reddington, one of the founder's of the Iditarod. So I was pleased with my choice. Going in Inuk's direction is her sire Miko, a really big guy at 124lbs. He was a very tall and lanky dog that harkened back to the old trap lines in his looks. His mate was a sprint dog - wolf mix owned by a Swiss couple. Cheyenne was one of the most athletic dogs I ever saw, and very pretty. She was tall, long, and supple. And a very spiritual quality. She seemed to know what i was thinking all the time. Her eyes reflected such a magnificent spirit, she was certainly the perfect match for big Miko! I loved watching Cheyenne run, her owners and myself took the proud parents to the beach and they ran all over with 8 week old pups. Little did I know that would be the last time I would ever breed sled dogs outside of Alaska.
My Inuk
Tahla
Jumping around, I want to tell about Tahla, Inuk's great grand daughter. Inuk and Luna, the daughters of Miko and Cheyenne, came with me and Miko and Boomer the cat to Fairbanks Alaska. Tahla is the daughter of Minka, one of my main leaders. Minka is the daughter of Magic and my dog Kazi. Kazi is the son of Tuggs (Reddington) and Inuk. Okay, that said back to Tahla.... I kept three pups from the Minka and Miguel (King) breeding and the rest went as service dogs. The pups were a surpise to me as Minka came to me already bred, unbeknownst to me. Rook, Minik, Nuhla, Tahla, Raven, Moon, and Breeze came to us on the night of the blue Moon, 2009. They are all fantastic dogs, and Minik, Tahla and Moon are three of my best dogs. Tahla has tremendous speed, and a huge trot. She loves being in the house - she loves running in the team. Recently I went to let her off her box and to run and have fun playing with her mom Minka. she was not watching what she was doing because Minka was herding her around. Tahla was just trying to get free of her mom so she could open up that tremendous speed of hers once out to the field. But instead, Tahla ran into some fallen trees and impaled herself in a fallen tree whose branches were broken- I had worked all summer with my broken ankle to clean this area up but had never finished. The sharp branch went into her neck right above her collar bone. She screamed bloody murder! She came to me and she was bleeding out. I was stunned but realized that there was not a darn thing I could do about it. It was awful, she was bleeding like a pitcher pouring out all its water, spurting a fountain. she came and looked me in the eyes. i took her to her box and she got on it. I did not want her to die with her chain on. so we left it on the ground. I said, I'm sorry baby, I love you so much, just go to the light. Thank you for being my friend and thank you for your love. I was calm, very resigned. I could do nothing - I live in the bush. I was just full of love, acceptance and appreciation for the time I had with her. I kissed her head. She closed her eyes, we touched foreheads. Several minutes passed. It was like time just stopped. And then, something weird happened. The bleeding just stopped. I was puzzled. she opened her eyes. I thought, wow!? Really? I ran to the truck and plugged it in, then covered the front seat with a blanket. the truck was only plugged in for maybe 3 minutes, but somehow, at -10 the old Toyota started. I went to get my girl and put her gently on the passenger seat, worried that I would make her bleed just by moving her. But no more blood appeared. Off we went to the vet, over an hour away, speeding on icy roads. The drive was torture for me but I was hopeful. I told her "Tahla, I love you. We were half way there. She looked at me with her soft brown eyes and put her head on my lap. She seemed weak but stable.
Finally we drove into town, I've never been so happy to see Fairbanks Alaska! Of course we hit every red light. It seemed an eternity before we found the after hours vet.... a tiny building with a small sign. I honked the horn and help came right out. They just looked at her and all the blood on us both and started to prep her for surgery. After checking the color of Tahla's gums, and looking at her all over, the vet said - "I think she is going to be fine". Soon after my girl was sedated so they could clean and suture the wound, I left and went home. Tahla was busy with her bags of fluids to replace some of what she lost. Another hour to drive home. Then to feed all the dogs and reassure them that everything was okay. The dogs were frantic, still smelling the blood and feeling my worry. I assured them Tahla would be home. I kissed and petted and hugged them all! At 8pm I called as instructed by the vet. Apparently Tahla was ready to come home! She was jumping around nervous and looking for me! Two hours later we were lying together on my bed and I was realizing this dog wanted to go out and sleep in her own house. Oh my baby girl! I wanted her to sleep inside on my bed and be warm and safe. But she would have no part of it, whining and complaining and yes, panting. A tall skinny dog, with a think coat, As a yearling we had already been though a lot together. Tahla was cold intolerant and a grey zone hypothyroid. She had lost what little fur she had and I treated her successfully with herbs, vitamins and "Indium".
And a week later my dog is totally fine. Talk about creating a different reality! Together we shifted. And I was amazed. Embrace change. Allow it. When you push against it things do not work at quite as well! What a shift. Today Tahla went over and sniffed around all the blood lying under the snow. She looked at me. Then she ran helter skelter to the field!
Tahla has continued to run with the team, like the wind, easily one of my best dogs and for sure, my best friend!
8/29/2013 A new house and more dogs!
Its been some time now since I have posted here. Tahla healed up but family moved awat and I ended up homeless in the forest with 23 sled dogs. We did a good job with the hoemless bit, having caring neighbors and a good work to do, and now I have my own first house and we have added a rescued dog as well as one new pup, a strange and wonderful story. I shall tell it but later. After moving from Two Rivers to the Goldstream Valley, I began to collect kids and dogs again. Whew! Rougher trails but they get me in good condition, albeit a bit more scratched up. Narrow and low tunnels of willows through which I sit on my heals as my sled rails through, dogs oblivious to my position, and after three glaciers of yellow overflow we head straight up and up and up! Crazy but fun. We have a ten mile loop that will do for now.
Thanks to whatever neighbor cut out these willows and allowed me to stand properly again on my sled!
And here on a windy trail we have drug ourselves up and up and have more to go.
