I have a few thank-you notes to write in the next day or so, for those of you who kicked in to the “feed the rabbit” fund after this recent post. I am breathing a little easier. I still have tough decisions to make, but I now have more than just a few days in which to make them.
The wolf is still at the door, of course. I played with him on Monday, in fact; on my knees and growling and hands splayed wide in as close a simulation of “wolf jaws” as I could manage. His name is Louie, and he is only about a quarter golden retriever. The rest of him, the extra teeth, the paws the size of softballs, the 70 pounds of formidable grace — the rest of him is all wolf. He greeted us cordially as we arrived, inspected us, and it only took him ten minutes or so to suss out my being a dog in a human suit. From that point it was on between us, and it took me a good twenty minutes at the end of the day to thoroughly rid my forearms of slobber.
He patrols his patch of desert dutifully, nudging the coyotes off his turf to protect his little lab-mix girlfriend, Stella. The coyotes accede without much fuss. They are prudent, and he is more than twice their mass on average. There is plenty of room elsewhere for them, plenty of rabbits in the conservancy land to the south, or atop Black Lava Butte across the road.
On Monday Louie fell asleep in front of my chair, my sandaled foot his pillow.
It had been a shitty weekend, though not for me so much as for people I love. My friend Christian died on the 24th. I miss him, but his loss is necessarily most keenly felt by his family, including his cousin Matthew, my closest friend. Annette and I took part in the funeral and informal wake on Saturday, shed tears and laughed, hugged Matthew and his family, then drove home — to find out Sunday that Christian’s younger brother Eric had died sometime in the night. Eric had a dog, a fine sweet smart boy named Ulysses, and on Monday Matthew’s sister Kay Kay sent me a tentative note asking if perhaps Ulysses could come live with me. It was difficult to say no, despite my lack of income and my lease with the “no dogs” clause.
It’s been five years already, or it will be in a few months. I would not have thought that possible. I sent Kay Kay a regretful email and then headed uphill toward Pipes Canyon, where Louie inspected me, grabbed my arms one after the other in his slavering maw and growled luxuriously, then fell asleep with his head on my foot.
We watched the clouds track across the desert. It was delicious and cool. A large hawk perched on a power pole a short distance away, surveying its domain. Louie and Stella’s humans, Stephen and Lakey, told us stories of the wildlife they’d seen. Stephen had collected a basket full of sun-beached coyote skulls on his walks. Eagles cruised the property regularly, soaring on thermals off Black Lava Butte to spy jackrabbits in the catclaw acacia scrub. The eagles showed up for meetings she held on the patio, Lakey told us; visits that those meeting decided were full of significance and portent.
Black Lava Butte hangs over their place like a wall over a slot canyon, a steep 600-foot escarpment of lava clinkers leading to a broad mesa. The meteorological testing tower isn’t visible from their patio; you have to walk out to the driveway to see it. But that tower dominated the view in all directions on Monday, the way a wildfire just on the horizon dominates a view of dry prairie.
A unique, irreplaceable spot in the desert, full of Joshua trees and acacia, mesquite and coyotes and jackrabbits and Louie and Stella and their cat, full of eagles and hawks, owls of the great horned and barn varieties, prairie falcons and bats and rainbows, and so of course there are plans to cover Black Lava Butte with giant wind turbines.
Who has the luxury of rest these days? I remember so many times, over the last decades of work as an environmental activist, where the burnout and the fatigue built and I just sloughed off responsibilities I’d handed myself, decided to let someone else do the rabble-rousing over Unpopular Clearcut A or Misguided Transit Cutback B. There was a whole community of activists there to take up the slack, back then; national organizations with support to lend and people ready to heed the call. Now the national organizations fight for the other side, and their staff must guard their speech, be careful not to let their true sympathies show too much. One desert paradise after another goes under the plow, the bulldozer, gets platted out and offered up to the gods of energy and the gods of compromise. Each one has its own wild denizens, each one its people who love it.
Not all of them have Louie on patrol, but you can only ask just so much. A double rainbow blossomed at the beginning of twilight after we’d savored fat sparse raindrops for a few hours. Louie took up his nightly post at the front of the driveway, in a three-foot hole he’d carefully dug out. Can it really be five years since I’ve played like that with a good dog, the mock-baring of teeth and the gauging of trust? Can it really have been four years since I fell hard in love with that piece of land now cleared for heliostats? There comes a point where one cannot avoid the prospect of future grief any longer. One must commit.
Louie had been abandoned in Pipes Canyon — some jarhead from 29 or other young and transient type — and he was near wild when Stephen found him. It took some time to gain his trust. That trust was gained, and then some. Louie had been limping when we arrived, and Stephen blamed his rambunctiousness, along with unseen rabbit holes and the Law of Inertia as it applies to a 70-pound body in motion at 35 miles per hour, but at length his curiosity was piqued, and he called Louie over to his side. Paw went into hand; thorn came out of paw. When they met Louie, alone in the desert, had been howling at night for a week or so. After a few days Stephen answered.
1 comment on "Louie"
Chris, I love your description of Louis, and your developing relationship with this big wolf! Thank you for sharing your love of dogs, and what might be your tentative experimenting with loving a dog again. All the best. I’ve enjoyed reading your blog since the Zeke days and read your book and admire your journey. Julie