Amazing how the planet keeps spinning around the sun. Or, maybe not at all. But time keeps spiralling by, and this past week marked the four-year death anniversary of our family Bernese Mountain Dog, Marshall. If you pause and do a little bit of advanced calculus, you’ll realize that Marshall’s death came only a few weeks before this whole other ordeal we came to know as COVID. It was a hard stretch.
Without getting all reiki on you people, I think there’s an important and practical way to create an afterlife, and this blog post is part of it. Circulating memories and lessons from someone who died is a great way of keeping them alive, or with us at least. No need for crystals, candles, chimes or chanting here. And so, what better way to take this week’s dive into curiosity and culture than by following the lead of a dog who was bred to herd cattle in the Swiss Alps. Today we’re the cattle and Marshall’s taking the lead.
Marshall was an amazing dog. A thoroughly tribal creature who was affectionate toward his pack and didn’t give much of a shit about anyone else, other than the squirrels he realized after only a few years weren’t worth the chase in his lumbering, 110-lb fullback frame. What he lacked in gracefulness he made up for in looks. A truly fine specimen whose first and only aggressive instincts I ever saw turned toward an outsider (like a loud dog) if they even batted an eye toward my young kids, who he immediately saw as his to protect.
Caring for any creature brings its highs and lows and in the intensity of the ordeal it can be hard to make much sense about anything that’s going on. But as an old prof used to tell me, we’re all standing at the back of a big boat staring down at the wake coming out beneath, saying What choppy waters those were. The front of the boat, cutting into the waves, is where life is actually happening.
I can regale you for hours about Marshall’s amazing qualities and how fantastic Bernese Mountain Dogs are, and why to never get a purebred dog, but instead I’ll focus on one story because this isn’t COVID and you’re not making sourdough and searching for other quaint ways to fill your time. On with the show.
Being a mountain dog, I felt that one way I could help Marshall realize his potential would be taking him to the Rockies for a grand excursion into the wild, crossing ridges, living off foxes, rabbits, and berries, and waking to bird-chirping sunrises in flowery meadows. Or something like that. Anyway, we needed to start somewhere so I took him to the Pinery Provincial Park, on the shore of Lake Huron. We’d eventually find our way to those pastoral peaks; car camping was our entrée to that escapade.
Every time I camp I remark (with some serious discomfort) at how much stuff I need to bring along to not die. I’m not talking about glamping, and still, as I pulled out of my driveway and saw the back of my car filled with bins and bags and a giant dog, I was reminded how far from The Wild I ever am.
Marshall and I pulled up to our campsite a few hours later: a kidney-shaped clearing in the unusual oak savannah this area of the province is known for. A lovely edged border of poison ivy. I started hauling gear out of the car, kicking around in the dirt to find a smooth place for the tent, hauling bins of cooking supplies, stringing up lines to hang clothes from, installing my obligatory shrine to Lee Scratch Perry at the base of a wisened old oak tree. About thirty seconds into this ordeal I looked over my shoulder, saw Marshall sniffing around. He crossed the site once, found a place in the shade, did a little circle and lay down in the dirt. Chin flat on the ground, eyes nearly closed. He’d arrived.
Over the next hour as I crisscrossed the site making it a little more hospitable, I felt a bit more at ease & arrived, having at least one of our crew so content. It can take a little while to settle into a new place, and I watched it take Marshall less than a minute.
(Okay, you cynics will rightly point out that he’s in the care of someone else and doesn’t need to deal with his own needs. First of all, I’ll remind you that he’s a dog so chill out, and secondly, point out that the extent of his needs were some food in a plastic container and a metal bowl for water. He travels light.)
Transitions tend to be tricky things. Regardless if they’re taking us to a better place, we humans relish in whatever we find familiar. Inmates who become outmates after a decade in the slammer. I’D RATHER BE IN PRISON is not a bumper sticker you see too often but people feel it, whether they were incarcerated literally or metaphorically. Any change we’re going through – assuming it’s larger than getting out of bed in the morning (actually, scratch that. Terrible example) – can not only be difficult, but can lead us to turn the change into a way bigger deal than it is, planning and preparing and procrastinating and a whole bunch of other P-words.
Of course, there’s this other P-word, “prudence”, which is real too. Considering risk isn’t a bad thing to do, but many of the struggles we deal with in transitions have little to do with prudence. Whether it’s selling a house or changing a job or altering a relationship or painting your kitchen or reorganizing your Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues … alphabetically … it can be really hard to settle. We find ourselves crisscrossing the poison-ivy-encircled clearing almost maniacally when actually, it’s a sunny afternoon and there’s plenty to enjoy and little to be done.
(Epilogue: Eventually tiring of his first shady spot, my curious dog got up, looking for adventure. Encircling the campsite was dense edging of a green plant he hadn’t encountered before. And what better way to discover poison ivy than by eating it? I saw him off in the bushes feeling no burn because of his fur, but clearly the digestive system wasn’t enthralled and after eating a few mouthfuls promptly threw up. Then went back to relax.
Good one, Marshall 🐾)