03 February~2004
I have tried to tell the story of my three mountain dogs before, but am not sure I have gotten it done yet. Some stories beg to be told again, in a different way. Perhaps it will take years to figure them out, a lifetime to get over them.
They are just dogs, not humans, some will way. But these dogs backpacked with me all over Colorado and plenty of Wyoming. Us four would climb way above timberline where I would set up camp. After dark I would sit outside the tent with them in awe at all the stars in the night sky, that spread down to the mountain peaks.
On one occasion them and me hiked up a Wind River trail after an early September snowstorm. The melting snow raised the stream levels, causing me to have to cross the stream once with the dogs and a second time with my pack. I braced myself with a stick against the current, and never moved my feet until I had the stick securely placed in the upstream flow.
Boogie and Cody were smart enough to leap behind large rocks, taking advantage of eddys in the current. Poor old Bud didnt have enough weight for that, and cried when the current pulled him to the end of his rope, tied to my waist.
Bud and I took our first backpack trip without Boogie and Cody in the late summer of 2000. I am sure Bud missed them like I did, and it left me a little heartbroke. You see Boogie and Cody were only mine in the sense they claimed me as their mountain buddy and lifelong friend, the guy who took them on walks every morning on the greenbelt down the hill from our home.
I have never quite reconciled to my mountain dogs spending their time after me behind a fence, never to be looking down from a mountainside, and I doubt if they have either. Boogie put up with it for a while, but when I never showed up to take him places, started to jump fences to do his own wandering.
Maybe things would have been different if I hadnt been so unwilling to move, but I doubt it. I had trouble giving up the 300-acre greenbelt just down the hill from our house. I mean that greenbelt has a wooded north ridge, bromegrass meadows, lakes and springs, cattail marshes and a river flowing through it. I think what I enjoy most of all are the large cottonwood groves, including one of eleven trees that I always considered a sacred place. I figured this old house would be just fine as long as I could walk through that grove of cottonwoods every morning.
So Bud and me were up there in the alpine, alone and working to adjust to it, with a heavy heart. We were tired after long mountain days, and went to sleep right at dusk. Dark was coming around 8 then, with the season winding down. By 4am Bud and me were ready to get up. I found an angled flat boulder and would lie on it on my back beside my old dog and gaze up at the predawn heavens, watching shooting stars from the persoid meteror showers. Eventually the sky would lighten down below, way off to the east, and we would witness the magnificence of morning in the high country.
But if there is anything the mountains, it is healing. Bud and I climbed up and explored hidden basins above our camp in the daytime. Ptarmigans were everywhere on that trip, which excited Bud, although he stayed close by me.
We went over to a lake that I knew contained large Cuthroat trout and caught several for a feast like no other, in the bright sun and clear sky and fresh air.
In the evening we watched the sunset on a ridge overlooking the lake and saw the most incredible alpenglow on Mt Harvard, reflected in the lake.
Up high in solitude, you tend to slow down and sort things out, which is part of the spiritual renewal that is in the mountains. I always come down feeling blessed, as if my life is not passing by too fast, because I lived the last few days with such intensity.
And while up there I also think about my daughters and hope and pray for goodness to continue in their lives; and to be honest I do the same for my exwife, since a parting doesn't always change the deep feelings you may have for a person.
But on this trip, with Bud beside me, I started to realize that he was going to be alone back home, and how hard that may be for the old dog. He had always lived with human and dog companions, and I felt sorry for him being so lonely while I had to be away at work.
Some things in life that you can't change you just have to let be, but this was not one of those things. When I got back I found a border collie breeder that had a litter of pups from her best dog due in a few months. After the litter was born she wrote that she had picked out a little girl for me and Bud, a black and white fluffball with three white legs and one brown and one blue eye, and the most loving disposition of any dog that you ever saw.
Bud and I and my two daughters drove down to Albuquerque to get little Maggie when she was six weeks old. The first time I picked her up I held her close to my chest and she nestled her head in the hollow of my neck. She took to all of us right away in the long ride back home. Now Bud was old and was not inclined to openly show a lot of affection to this little pup, but he was thrilled with all the puppy lick kisses she showered upon him. Maggie treated old Bud like he was the greatest creature that ever walked this earth, and would curl up by his side when she slept.
Now I know I am a person that is usually more comfortable alone than with people, and I know some would say I am socially maladjusted, or some sort of loser for those habits, and I don't think I would argue with them. But I have wondered if it isnt a blessing to be happy with a simple life, in not looking past the joys that make each day on earth so memorable, like mountain valleys and morning walks and black and white border collie pups.
And that little puppy was a gift beyond all others for old Bud and me
Little Maggie loved both of us with the kind of love only seen in dogs, that knows no bounds. She brightened our days with her passion and happiness at being alive, and that was reflected into our own hearts.
You see both Bud and I were going through tough times then - me trying to keep my heart from turning hard in losing the only woman I had ever been close to, and Bud at age ten developing cancer in the fall and having only a year left in his life. Maggie eased the transition for both Bud and I with her joy in living.
And something else happened. When I sit with Maggie now, several years later, I detect an air of wisdom about her. You see Maggie followed Bud around, watched his every move, slept beside him at night, and maybe some of the old dog wisdom of Bud may have been passed on to my little Maggie.
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"The most wonderful thing about the dog is not his intelligence, but his capacity for loving. We can call it by no other name. The more you love your dog, the more your dog loves you. . . He will follow you to the ends of the earth if you love him enough."
- John Burroughs
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