Really, I’m making myself post. I have a few ideas for future posts, but I’m scratching right now. This morning, I was thinking about a moment when I first got a smart phone. I was at a teacher writing retreat and we were asked to do a “heart map” assignment — a topic-generating exercise where you brainstorm words representing people, places, memories, stories to put into an outline of a heart — things dear to you that you might expand into some discursive prose.
I had done that many times, and there was always material. This day there was none. The only prop that had changed was that I now had a demanding little computer in my hand. I dismissed the idea but haven’t forgotten.
On our big tree trail mornings lately, I’ve been feeling my phone—which I keep on me for photos— intrude on my awareness. One ping and I’m no longer looking at the fractal-like pattern on the trail or the marvel of an exploded tree from last week’s windstorm; I’m rehearsing an email, or working my calendar.
That’s easy enough to fix and I will manage it. But I guess I’m dragging myself to the keyboard to admit that right now…I’m needing to pause and acknowledge an emptiness. Cedar is not showing any obvious new growth (although I’ve been contemplating our relationship like some kind of [occasionally annoying] friendship of late), and I have realized that the snow excites her in part because one of her favorite games is hide and seek, and the snow does the hiding, while her nose does the seeking. The world becomes one big treasure hunt and I’m afraid much of that treasure is of the fecal variety. Tonight she celebrated the return of winter by pushing her head along and through snow in the front yard in a hilarious little display of play.
“Not even arms will come of nothing” – Parmenides
But I’m thinking of Wallace Stevens’ lines from “The Snow Man,” which push us to contemplate and maybe value absence. (Did I really just realize tonight after reading this a thousand times before that there is no snow man in the poem?) I think a point of the work is to ask us to check our artifice and try to just see the world as it is. January helps with that, I guess. I think, too, of the dramatic kickoff to the plot in King Lear, where Cordelia’s “nothing” to her pompous praise-seeking dad, engenders “Nothing will come of nothing” and the whole big something of the tragedy. (I gather that nothing begetting nothing goes all the way back to the Greeks, too—some dude named Parmenides who doesn’t have any arms any more.)
So.. riffing off of Stevens…. The “nothing that is not there” is a story or a point worth writing about here in the late January days of Tom and Cedar. The “nothing that is” could be just plain nothing; it could be the starting place of everything (to imagine the beginning of the universe you have to imagine before it began, right?), or it could be just a bunch of photos of a dog, a dog who sees nothing but smells everything, then eats shit.
Glacier’s cool, but wanna see my tongue?
Tidepooling, Cedar-style
Swim at the North Douglas boat ramp
Moon, mountain, cove
We try to avoid headlamp walks
There’s gotta be a bit of shame in the neon collar
A week or so ago, Cedar pointed out this dead raven (Yéil in Tlingit) on the side of the big tree trail. I’m not sure if it’s a symbol, a cause, or a cure, but at the moment I’m writing about it because you might say I have blogger’s block. Cedar and I are slogging through a dark, wet January without a whole lot of adventure to report. (It blew 181 mph on nearby Sheep Mountain last night. We were not there.)
While the title of this piece with the image of the dead bird might be the perfect place to end this experiment, I’m going to believe that the way out is through…Yes, I know, I’m asking a lot of you.
But ravens are so much a part of our lives here, and I know so little about them, really, I thought it might be worth a few minutes.
They alternately piss me off and make me laugh. Just last week at Costco, I watched a couple eye me as I walked 25 feet to the cart corral after putting the groceries in the bed of the truck. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized my back was turned long enough for one to get a couple of beaks full of a $45 package of New York steak.
Once, years ago, I skinned up a mountain we called “Cisler” at Unalaska (Tim Cisler is a mountain goat of a friend who scampered up there regularly). I pushed through the fog to summit and as I squatted down to take the climbing skins off my skis, two ravens caught my and dog Will’s attention. They were playing catch with a feather. One would rocket into the blue sky above the other, drop a feather, which the lower bird would swoop and catch, and they would then trade roles, yakking about the fun as they went. Meanwhile, the fog below us kept the whole scene a secret from the rest of the world.
O’Claire, Armstrong, and Carstensen, in The Nature of Southeast Alaska write, “Ravens and crows offer evidence—somewhat rare in nature—that curiosity pays. Most birds and mammals mind their own business, behaving in relatively predictable ways, with a narrow range of forage and cover preferences. Ravens, however, use every unsubmerged community in Southeast Alaska .”
In the same passage, the authors write, “The Tlingit and other peoples of the Northwest Coast recognize the deep intelligence and profound ecological importance of ravens….The Native sense of humor and sophisticated mythology accord Raven a sort of hobo’s dignity.” Meanwhile, out in the Aleutians, I asked an Unangan friend and culture bearer how they viewed Raven in their traditions. “Dirty, rotten shit eater,” was the exact phrase she used.
When Cedar disappears, the first spot I still look is the neighbors’ place where they feed our dignified hobos dog biscuits each morning. The birds bury them for their young — and Cedar, apparently. Maybe one day they will teach her to fly, or fetch steaks.
So what’s the point here? “Nevermore” croaked one raven. Man and dog eventually tried to give the bird a more dignified final resting place. Man noticed that they have cool white coloration under the black chest plumage.
But for better or worse, man lives to try to write one more day, scratching his own grey plumage about how or whether curiosity might pay.
I’m traveling again. Inevitably in fall and winter, while I’m somewhere with less extreme weather, my phone lights up with notifications of “Small Craft Advisories” from places near home I shudder to be.
It hit me this morning as I walked the frozen ground with Cedar that what I have to write about today requires me to take inventory. So far I’ve had more boats than either dogs or wives since I’ve been in Alaska. I hope to keep it that way. (I’m on boat number four, dog three, and wife two. I’m pretty happy with two out of three, and as you know, I love the dog.)
So for today’s meditation, Cedar is going to have to wait while I dial back one boat, one dog, and one wife.
In 2002 or 2003, the kids’ mom, Ali, and I camped out in our old flat bottomed C-Dory and we got our spines shortened by that thing in a nasty blow coming home. Ali subsequently gave me carte blanche to buy a bigger and more capable boat. In a few months, I was cruising around Washington’s San Juans on a test drive of a 1990 26’ Olympic.
She arrived later that fall with an old gas guzzler OMC outboard. One test drive in Alaska waters, and I filled her up and then covered her up for the year. By the next spring the price of gas had doubled. So it wasn’t long before my investment in the boat had doubled. Brand new four stroke power.
The Olympic in Boat Harbor. I once posted this on social media with the caption, “The Art of Aging Gracefully.” In hindsight, I guess I aspired to her high functioning at a fairly advanced age, even with some significant new parts.
Somewhere after the break-in period, wife number one was breaking in a new partner, and I had the amazing fortune of meeting Katrina. The Olympic was our boat, and what follows is just a smattering of memories of adventures with Katrina, Katie, Tim, and our then-new puppy Bella.
Matt catches a fishing rod.
During Katrina’s first weekend in Juneau, we fished in the Oly. We were working close to shore and not doing much. I had an idea the waters behind Pt. Retreat might be worth a try, but I didn’t want to push things on the first “date.” When I brought up the idea of heading for some less protected waters, I did so a bit gingerly. Katrina’s response, “Don’t be a pussy! Let’s go catch some fish.” That was the moment I realized that I already had a keeper on board.
I didn’t have a truck back then so needed moorage. I dreaded calling Betsy Haffner, the dragon at the gate of Tee Harbor, a peaceful old marina out the road. And she lived up to her reputation, making me listen to her grumbling about who wasn’t paying their bills, who expected her to run a yacht basin, etc. At some point I snuck in that I had a 26’ Olympic, and she surprised me several minutes of rant later. “Olympic, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Well that’s a real boat, designed the way a boat should be. We’ll have room for you. Call me in the spring.”
Tim wasn’t an immediate convert. I remember a conversation with him that went something like this. “Dad, can this boat tip over?”
“No, Tim, it’s specially designed to stay upright even when it’s rough.”
“Well, could it sink?”
“Oh no. It has floatation built into the hull.”
Tim got quiet for a few minutes and I almost forgot about the conversation until he came out of the cabin with a fire extinguisher and pronounced, “It could catch fire or you wouldn’t have this on board.” No questions this time.
“The readiness is all.” — Tim (or Shakespeare)
And… turns out he was right. It did catch fire once when we were anchored up for the night in Barlow Cove. I got a little careless lighting the alcohol stove—which was already lit—and the flames traveled up to the gallon can of alcohol I was holding, lighting it immediately. The kids scolded me for throwing the can overboard and I apologized while hunting madly to douse any invisible flames that might have traveled down the cabinets.
It seems like it might have been Katrina’s next trip — but it was likely a year or two later—that she and I headed out to Boat Harbor (photo above) with weeks-old Bella pup. Katrina never knew that we were nearly out of steering fluid, but the trip went smoothly until Bella’s nose belied my fake confidence in the fresh bear tracks. She ran towards some cloud of smell, which flattened several alders as it fled my shouts. With the dog safely in my arms, I finally registered Katrina’s voice. “My boot! What should I do?” She had run out of it and left it in the mud. Ah, go back and get it?
To own an old boat is to have an intimate relationship with entropy. One spring while frantically trying to ready her for Katrina’s first visit of the season, I realized the bilge pump wasn’t working. This was a task within my skill set. I removed the mounting screws and discovered that water was bubbling up out of the screwholes in the top side of the bottom of the boat. That seemed strange enough, but I gave it time. Then I attached a shop vac for 24 hours, then I attempted some extra hot fiberglass resin on each hole. Nothing could match the power of water to come to daylight.
I finally called the local fiberglass guy, “Itchy Willy,” who, long story short, presented me with a 1” drill bit, about a foot long, and sent me under the hull to drill some holes. “There are some things a guy just has to do himself.” About five gallons of water and almost as much fiberglass later, we were back in business.
A year or two later, Katrina and I had just set anchor and settled into our bunk for the eve when we started smelling gas. I spent the rest of the season trying to troubleshoot and eventually concluded the tank itself had a leak. This meant tearing out the deck, replacing all the waterlogged foam, and some rotten stringers, and putting Humpty Olympic back together again. Kaching.
Time for a new gas tank.
But she did us right, taking us out and home comfortably in all kinds of weather. Towards the end of our time with the Oly, as fish were getting harder and harder to find, Katrina and I were getting beaten up pretty badly. Her tune changed from “Don’t be a pussy,” to “How much can this boat take?”
That was a question I didn’t want answered. I sold her several years ago. But this week, I happened to see the answer on Facebook. Tim was right a second time; apparently it was worth inquiring into her buoyancy. She did outlive both a dog and a wife, though.
Like the decorated Aleutian bush pilot who crashed at the end of the Juneau runway, apparently she ended her service to her current owner on a blue bird day in the harbor.
RIP “Oly” 1990-2023; Friday Harbor to Fisherman’s Bend
When my phone pings with “Small Craft Advisories” I’m tempted to feel a little smug that mine’s in the driveway. But really, I guess the point of having a small craft in the land of big weather and big forces is to sort of subscribe to the small craft’s advisories—to treat her like “a real boat” and see what she tells you, to occasionally see what she and we can take. Or at least to stay sharp on how to operate the fire extinguisher.
Katrina and I included a reference to small craft in our marriage vows.
This relationship is our precious home place, our garden, our single boat on seas that can get rough. Let’s take care of it.
The rough seas have arrived. At least boat ownership, unlike homes or gardens or wives or dogs, comes with advisories. And so far I still have a wife who won’t let me be too much of a wuss. And a dog who’s game for it all.
January. We’re almost clear of all the resolution talk and back to plain old life.
It had been a while since I had played Big Tree Eight Ball…where I take a moment to pause in front of the forest elder, take a few breaths, and see if he-she has any insight to share, so I gave it a spin this morning.
Feeling like a bit of a conscientious objector to new beginnings myself, I thought I had come up empty, and started home. For some reason, I turned back for one more look. I chuckled seeing Cedar doing the same—maybe both of us taken with the sunlit side of the old spruce.
The phrase “bright side” popped into my head, dragging with it the old standby of river rafting: “high side!” One usually shouts or thinks “high side” when shit is in the process of hitting the fan… the low side starting to get sucked under the current, and worse forthcoming. Anyone on board needs to scramble to the high side.
So maybe my resolution is to be better prepared to scramble for the bright side. (Now Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” has to be reckoned with.) But what if I spent a little extra time in coming days mentally “bright siding”..?
I might be incredibly thankful that Tim, Cedar, and I survived a 50+mph set of 360s and a high impact dive into the ditch in the truck a few days ago with yours truly at the wheel. I might be savoring the fresh memory of Katie-love for all of us as she wings her way back to college. This in turn might encourage me to appreciate the few days I have left with Tim here, and to vicariously feel all that hope of a kid who just finished college.
And, hey, we are on the bright side of the winter solstice.
If Cedar and I could chat about title of this post, I think we’d agree for different reasons. The packed ice on the trail today kept Cedar waiting (sort of) for Dad to creep along with the help of ski poles. And because he was going a bit slower, Dad paid a little extra attention to the assignment he used to give his students in the woods: See time.
It’s not ALL waiting when Dad goes slowly. Cedar may actually log more steps and sniffs, running up and down hill, sniffing under fallen trees, climbing under exposed roots, and doing dog-knows-what before coming back to prove she can wait on me. But one way we can see time today, kids, is the foot-packed ice left on the trail, as January awaits turning back into January.
Today’s amble reminded me of learning about the concept of “hill creep” –the slow movement of the land’s surface downhill–in what feels like a geologic era ago. I remember seeing some dramatic photos (slides in a projector, no doubt) of trees with arced boughs testifying to gravity’s slow pull on land, while the trees corrected to head straight for the light. The savvy land purchaser, our professor told a bunch of students living off of cheap beer and food stolen from the cafeteria, would look at the trees before purchasing a home.
Although my photo is certainly not dramatic enough to make today’s Ecology 101 slide shows, I was struck by an occasional testament to hill creep today. In a way this photo is not fair to illustrate movement so slow we might call it a “creep”—I took it in a slide area that must have moved relatively rapidly in recent geologic terms. Still, it’s a cool testament to trees’ phototropism, that tendency to make a beeline for the light.
In fact, my big dumb thought in the bigger trees today was more about hill non-creep, the dramatic staying in place that’s been in vogue among the big spruces (especially) on this walk for the last three or four-hundred years. It’s amazing to me how much has NOT crept despite the considerable slope of the hillside, and, I’m sure, epic weather events over the centuries.
In this little speck on the planet, there’s more at stake than the title of a post in a dog blog. (I know you don’t believe that.) The big question, I think is about just how much time you have to see to see change. In other words, just how fast are things losing their grip? There’s a storm brewing in town already about a new study reclassifying slide zones. Houses previously outside of the worst paths of historical and predicted avalanches are now included within those zones in the newest study. Luckily or unluckily, the City didn’t have enough money to expand the re-classification to our neighborhood. Besides having confirmation that something more than creep this way comes, property owners in these zones take a big hit on insurance and property values. (The City refused to adopt the maps that the study produced—a classic exercise in denial that I think I support!)
These big trees give me some consolation. They have seen nearly half a millennium of wild weather, incessant gravity, and even a few years of really stupid politics. I know evolutionists (experts in seeing time) argue about gradualism, catastrophism, or, in one of my favorite phrases…”punctuated equilibrium.” Which all boils down to whether the important stuff creeps slowly over time, whether it happens in catastrophic events, or whether it’s some combination of stability-crisis-change-stability.
All I can say for sure right now is that the boreal giants in our back yard are marking time by not moving…much…yet. As for Cedar, I’m going to guess she’s happy Dad hobbled home so another trip to the big trees is pretty much ensured.
A couple of giants arcing to the light.Cedar on a slide path. Note the huge bough at her feet. I’ll take “gradualism” for 300 (years), please. Hang in there, dudes.
To conclude his scathing critique of my Jungian interpretation of King Lear, Professor Paul Cubeta wrote in blood red ink, “But what a magnificent failure!” The phrase came to mind today as Cedar decided to let go of terra firma, in a couple of almosts at being a successful retriever. I found them magnificent. And it’s my blog. (And I did somehow pass Cubeta’s class.)
P.S. While we’re on the subject of magnificent failures, Katie texted me this clip of one of her classmates’ ski race the other day, which goes a long way to explaining why I always felt a kinship with ski racers.
In our Irish family, compliments were rare, and usually served with a bit of backspin. My dad used to say routinely that one or the other of us had a “certain nuisance value”. “Don’t get a big head,” (ironic in a family full of 7 and 7/8″ + hats) was an unspoken family motto, along with “Do your damndest and let the chips fall where they may.”
I recognize a bit of that in myself as I receive and deflect Cedar compliments. I’ve heard myself returning, “She’s beautiful!” with, “We’ll, she’s a baby in an adult costume.” And, “Wow, her training’s coming great,” gets, “Yeah, until another dog comes around,” or, at best, “She’s a pretty good kid.”
I was just thinking about her big, kind heart on my way back from our morning walk when she bolted , ran over to Ace’s house, ignored my command to come back, and jumped up on each of Ace’s parents. So this morning, we’ll settle for “She means well.” Hard to top my brother’s response this weekend when he sent a photo from Auke Rec, a spot where king crab are harvested in shallow water in January. When I suggested he teach his water-loving gentle giant Lab, Bula, to dive for king crab, he responded, “Well, learning isn’t really her thing.”
Yesterday I took Cedar to the closest thing Juneau has to a dog park: Sandy Beach. I kind of hate the place, in part because it’s a beach made of mine tailings, in part because I’ll never really shed the horribly depressing divorce scene that takes place there in Jonathan Raban’s A Passage to Juneau, but mostly because it just gives me a dark feeling. But Cedar’s sweet heart was in full there yesterday—her first visit. She delighted in the water, tried her best to join some play with other dogs, came to the whistle (most of the time), even when she really wanted to bolt and check out a new friend.
The outing made clear to me that she really does mean well. (And I say that with only the slightest bit of backspin.) Lucky me to have another good kid.
At six months, our girl seems to be mellowing just a tad. And she seems to be consolidating her priorities. We have our well-documented (or at least regularly documented) routines. Up early for potty and breakfast. Walk at first light. A bit of play and training here and there. Another walk before last light (ideally), and, almost always, some evening floor-time with some sort of lovin’.
She’s pretty mellow about most things, honestly. She waits quietly to be let out of the kennel in the morning, and when I let her out, she stretches, wags her body once or twice, utters a happy sound or two, and gets to the day’s routine. And she kind of gets that when I’m on the computer she needs to entertain herself. But she makes her demands, too.
I thought about riffing a bit about her handshakes (not a trick to perform), especially after listening to this fun interview with Ella Al-Shamahi, author of The Handshake: A Gripping History, (spoiler alert that Covid will not kill the handshake), but I thought to mark Cedar’s six months it might be better to just note her unique take on touch.
If you spend a little time with Cedar, you’ll see how she uses her paws, whether to reach out and invite you to play, or to hold something while she chews it, or, lately, just to keep a point of contact while she’s doing something else. (Last night, I let her up in bed while I was reading. She stretched her full length, tummy down, across the bed, but made sure her chin was on my feet.) Lately, she’s been chewing a bone at my feet with one paw keeping contact, and keeping my foot right there.
I’m not sure she’s wild about being petted. She certainly doesn’t sidle in for more. And she’s more interested in attacking the brush than being groomed. A friend recently joked, “Give Cedar a shove for me.” She’d like that, I know. (She’ll often seek the pressure of my knees against the cabinets as I’m preparing food in the kitchen.)
This morning, in a week where I’ve had reunion Zooms with colleagues and former students from 30 years ago, I’m thinking about the dual meaning of keeping in touch. It’s lovely to stay connected or to get reconnected via our wild modern technologies, and even more lovely when we can sneak in a handshake or a hug. I guess Cedar’s keepin’ it real for me–when there’s no hugs or handshakes to be had, a paw whack, a shove, or a heavy chin on my feet ain’t nothin’.
Keep in touch, eh?
(Speaking of keeping in touch, did you know you can sign up for email notifications for this drivel? You can’t see it from your phone, but there is a “subscribe” box at right, when you view in a web browser. Let me know via mr.t.mck@gmail.com if you need help.)
I am occasionally a kept man. And yes, those slippers once had laces.
A recent AKC newsletter reminded me to stay tuned to Cedar’s body language. I’m sure I do that half consciously, and I had certainly read about it from the Monks’ perspective, but it’s good to have a refresher.
Images from The Monks of New Skete, The Art of Raising a Puppy
The AKC piece organizes similar information into categories: tail wagging, raised hackles, posture, facial expressions, and eyes. I loved this bit:
“The direction of the wag may hold clues as well. A recent study on tail-wagging showed that dogs tend to wag more to the right when they feel positive about something, like interacting with their owner. Tails wagged more to the left when dogs faced something negative. Then, there’s the helicopter tail wag where the dog’s tail spins in a circle. Without question, that’s a happy wag. You’ll usually see it when a dog is greeting a beloved person.”
Stephanie Gibault, “How to Read Dog Body Language,” January 27, 2020
I need to check when Cedar is more righty, and more lefty.
Meanwhile, though, I thought I’d share some results of my not-quite-ready-for-publication study of Cedar’s corporal communication.
Hell yeah! Snow!
Stinky stuff to eat. I am ON it.
Oh no, I didn’t sneak upstairs. Not me.
I didn’t mean to kill Debbie. Are you sure she wasn’t already dead?
ENOUGH with that computer thing, Dad.
Can’t a girl have a moment of Downward Dog in the morning?
Whale eyes? You want to see whale eyes?
Ain’t NO PLACE I’d rather be.
In, already?
But. I. Was. Just. Getting. Started.
Righty! On the trail with good stuff for the nose.
You can be the boss. Just pet me now, please.
Big trees, please. Let’s do this thing.
Smile right back atcha at the end of Montana Creek.
Cedar, out.
You have to be F-in kidding me.
Our study, of course begs inquiry into human body language communication. Pretty sure I have a constant expression that says, “Sorry folks. I’m doing the best I can with what I have here.” Pretty sure Cedar doesn’t judge.
In fact, is that a smile?
Mendenhall Campground the other day. We (both) have some work to do!
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