This was going to be a post about yoga. It’s not.

Last week I committed to pushing through some time-hardened reluctance to attend a “real” yoga class. Years ago, I had been in a regular practice with a compassionate teacher who recognized my very special limitations with flexibility. She left town. Prior to the pandemic, I had started a “restorative” routine on Sundays where I was (sometimes by far) the youngest person in the room. While others were trying to restore their lost range, I was trying to locate my never-found flexibility.

The night before my great return, Cedar’s bowels had other plans. We were up at 1, 3, and 5 for diarrhea breaks. I think it was my surprised 3 am momentary delight in how warm the carpet was before I realized what my bare foot was soaking in, when I scrapped the yoga “comeback” and tried to sleep in.

Yesterday’s not-so-great-circle walk started out as sleep-deprived drudgery for me (not so much for Cedar). Light revealed gobs more snow, and the stumble out to the cul-de-sac revealed chest-high berms along the street. Cedar, sensing the lead dog was derelict in his duties, began our walk as if to mock me, executing a professional downward dog. Some blur of time soon after, she climbed a snowbank and struck a busier version of the pose. By the time I scrambled up to see what had her attention, I saw her finishing off a store-bought dog treat.

One of my neighbors calls ravens sky monkeys. I love the term. Another of my neighbors–across the street from Cedar’s treasure–I have learned in my Cedar ambles, feeds ravens dog treats every morning. My guess is that Cedar’s snowbank paydirt was compliments of some ravens who had created their own little dog bone fridge.

Depending on whom you ask around here, ravens are somewhere between the creator of the universe, “God in a clown’s suit” (Richard Nelson), and “dirty rotten shit-eaters” (an Unangan friend). If you ask Cedar, I think she’d say they are well worth watching. A PBS Nature article falls a little short in marking their intelligence, I think, when the author says, “some scientists consider these black-feathered scavengers’ position on the intelligence spectrum to be on par with canids such as wolves, coyotes, and dogs.” They had me until “dogs”. Surely we can aspire higher.

In Make Prayer to the Raven, maybe Nelson’s most famous book, he wrote some beautiful things about coming to understand the Koyukon Athabaskan world view by understanding ravens.

“Where I come from, the raven is just a bird [an It]….But where I am now, the raven is many other things first..a person and a power, God in a clown’s suit, incarnation of once-omnipotent spirt. The raven sees, hears, understands, reveals determines. What is the raven? Bird-watchers and biologists know. Koyukon elders and children who listen know. But those like me, who have heard and accepted them both, are left to watch and wonder.”

richard K. Nelson, Make Prayer to the Raven

I think I’m in the watch and wonder camp, although I’ll defer to my Alaskan suburban whiteguy (just barely) elder, and settle for now with sky monkeys. As I was pondering this post, I did see a pretty amazing predawn raven rally downtown today.

Cedar’s skitters have settled some. The vet, or rather his flunky, S-12, (I was not allowed to talk directly to the vet sun during our visit last week; it was like a ‘consult the oracle’ game with S-12 relaying questions and answers on sticky notes) , says her GI issues are jut “typical puppy stuff” and that I should just just “watch what she eats.” Not a simple task when I let her roam a bit in the midst of record snowfalls. And it’s not just the snow: yesterday as I ran a Zoom meeting and tuned out her nibbling on my feet, I realized the rawhide lace of my slipper may soon be part of a Cedar carpet-warming gesture.

As for yoga, a friend, suspecting I might not be up to my self-imposed challenge, suggested a set of online videos in which you can search by your particular affliction. Ignoring for a second this all-over-the-place post, maybe we are tapping in to some cosmic unity after all. Skip the downward dogs, Cedar. We’re both going to try, “Yoga for Digestive Flow“, purported to be “great for digestion and perfect for when you need a nice yogic kick in the pants. A full body work out for those winter months with encouragement to breathe deep and connect to something bigger.”

If you see us trudging through the snow, stopping to watch the sky monkeys now again, you might think nothing has changed, but look for our “yogic glow”. And if you see me giving Cedar a kick in the pants…

Breathing out...