An updated version of this post is now available on Medium, an online journal.
Summer Solstice 2020. Personal and societal trauma have paralyzed my writing muscles. It’s been half a year since my last public blog post. What can I say about death, pandemic, and massive, violent political upheaval that might be comforting or of use to others? I’m a well-provided-for woman, comfortably sheltering at home from coronavirus in a liberal university community that has so far been only lightly touched by Covid-19. I have admitted to myself that, in spite of expeditions into hippie back-to-the-land lifestyle experiments and radical social and environmental justice protests, I’ve truthfully lived my whole life in what James Baldwin would consider a privileged, sanitized, white bubble.
Therefore, I sense that it’s not my place to speak up right now — that people of color, young people, those whose loved ones have been struck down by the twin pandemics of coronavirus and violent racial injustice need to be heard. I feel that even if I write from my deepest authentic truth, my words and thoughts will only trivialize the moment, will come out sounding like “performance wokeness,” staged to garner egoistic assurance that I have empathy and understanding for a suffering that I cannot honestly own.
So I apologize to you if you are reading this. I apologize for being irrelevant in this now. I apologize—to readers who were thinking I might write more—for taking six long months since my book launch to offer anything new. And I apologize for my compulsion to finally share my irrelevant words anyway — for having the hubris to add my voice to the hubbub of collective trauma in a time of global pandemic.
My inner guides told me it would be a good idea, in spite of terrible writing paralysis, to at least keep a private journal during this history-making pandemic, just for—you know, posterity. I order a new blank moleskin journal from Amazon and it gets dropped off at my front porch by a FedEx truck driver wearing a mask, who runs back to his truck before I open my door. I hold my bottle of sanitizer ready to spray on the package before I open it, hoping that won’t be a metaphor for what I will write in the new journal.
I haven’t picked up the journal often. Just scratched a few moments in time. My narrative breaks apart, no longer fixed to linear chronology, like my mind, unglued to reality. Vertigo. The isolation of months of sheltering in place and a world gone to chaos, a planet burning up—this invisible disease—it’s crazy making.
I break my long silence today starting with a story of personal trauma — the death of my dog, Sarah. Her passing last December opened the gate through which I fell, like Alice, into the chaotic world of the 2020 pandemic. I’ll end this story where I’m starting—today, June, 20, 2020—the Summer Solstice.
A sojourner walks Sky Road toward the dark mercurial sea. Caldrons of molten silver flare bright. Cold light. Gentle wind disperses sea foam and wisps of virga across the abyss. Journeying into Winter. Death. O Death.
I’d had several forewarnings – premonitions – of her death . . . of Death. Back then, I didn’t know for sure that it was her death. I thought maybe my death, or a friend’s.
Certainly it will be all of us, sooner or later. Right? Death and taxes. Pay debts. Clear karma. Make reparations. Ask forgiveness. Reconcile. Feel and show gratitude, and love. Decide how (or if) you want to prepare for the inevitable. Live fully every moment.
December 22nd, the day before the day before Christmas Eve, 2019. The first day of Hanukkah. At sunset, Joe and I were driving south on Highway 1, down to Monterey, to Pacific Palisades, to visit a friend with late-stage pancreatic cancer. It had been raining, so the coast was newly washed and fresh. I was gazing out through the car windows, appreciating clouds and sky tinged with pink, the pink reflecting in wetlands as we passed. I was searching for birds —hawk, stately egret, maybe GBH (Great Blue Heron).
A sudden strange perceptual change flowed through me. A gentle but profound and undeniable shift in my awareness heightened the beauty of the clouds and watery reflections. It came into my mind that death was whispering over the landscape. Breathing in the exhalation of Death’s wings gliding silently by, my heart felt as if brushed by feathers of dread, awe, wonder, and a bittersweet taste of sadness. During the sudden strange visitation, I did not allow fear to attach itself to me. I thought it natural to have such a premonition while on the way to visit a friend dying of cancer.
That morning, I had been seized by an uncharacteristic hunger. Usually, I skip breakfast, breaking my day’s fast well after noon with a small bowl of oatmeal and fresh fruit. But this Sunday morning I felt a strong need to make a substantial breakfast with potatoes and eggs. In fact, I had a craving for latkes. Joe told me to “Fo-git-abod-it.” Too complicated. Too much mess. We were going to have a big fancy dinner that night at Benihana’s in Monterey in honor of our godson Chris’s nineteenth birthday. I agreed with Joe, but my gut said, “Potatoes.” So I set to work.
Sarah assumed her position on her rug by the kitchen door in front of her bowl, confident that there would be treats forthcoming. Maybe I would throw her a piece of carrot or apple, a thick-stemmed broccoli “bone,” or — if the moon and stars were in alignment — possibly even a tiny piece of cheese or heaven bless us, bacon. Surely there would be doggy treats, and an early brunch of her usual chicken rice vegetable stew from a can mixed with Taste of the Wild salmon crunchies in filtered water, and (these days) Meloxicam for inflammation and arthritis pain. Maybe even a Greenie for dessert. Sarah was a happy girl. Did I give her a dropper full of canine CBD as well that day?
Joe was engaged in the Sisyphusian task of clearing his email cache in preparation for leaving the next day for Christmas vacation back East, at his family home near Washington D.C. We had agreed that I should stay home with Sarah. I don’t love flying at Christmas time. I prefer the West Coast to the East. Sarah was on a special diet, and at twelve, with arthritis, showing signs of mortality. I didn’t want to leave her in a kennel or home with a pet sitter.
I prepared a potato, egg, onion, garlic, kale, and small mild multicolored pepper scramble. It came together surprisingly fast and with little mess. Sarah received a few of the anticipated treats while the food was being prepared, and then, in her usual stonewalling fashion, ignored the chicken stew siting in her bowl while Joe and I ate. Joe probably slipped her a few choice bits of his breakfast while I wasn’t looking.
Breakfast eaten, Joe returned to his email and I returned to the kitchen to clean up. Sarah sat patiently in front of her bowl. I scrapped the crispy, buttery eggy remains out of my heavy stainless (not Teflon, not ever) frying pan, and sprinkled the larger bits onto Sarah’s stew. I scrapped another round of finer crumbles into my hand, and offered my hand to Sarah. She smiled. The pay-off for all that patient, stoic, stubborn waiting. Satisfaction. Contentment. Gratitude. Trust. Unconditional Love. Happiness. 
My heart breaks as I remember the feel of her tongue, lovingly licking those delicious eggy bits off my hand. Visceral memory. Slow lingering licks, she too appreciating not only the food but—maybe even more—our connection. My hand wet and sticky. Her eyes. Her smile. Our bond: physical, emotional, spiritual. Nourishing the body, the self, the soul, and also nourishing and caring for others is both a physical and a spiritual gift.
Sarah came into my life as if by magic. It was just after the Housing/Mortgage Junk Bond Crash, when so many people lost their homes to foreclosure. I was teaching middle school, a language arts sixth grade core (an extra-long social studies/language arts combo) in northeast San Jose, in a mostly Asian neighborhood at the foothills of the Coyote Creek watershed. I wanted desperately to write my novel, and was about to finally retire from teaching so I could get on with it.
My classes had just read Julie of the Wolves — a coming of age story about a native girl living with her traditional grandfather in a remote village in Alaska. Julie is told she must go with relatives to Anchorage, where she will marry her mentally disabled cousin. She runs away out onto the icy wilderness, nearly dies, and is rescued and cared for by a family of wolves. At the end of the story, the Anchorage relatives hire men who hunt by plane. They find Julie and her wolf family and—from the air—slaughter all the wolves. Blood on the ice. Julie was flown to back civilization 
to marry her cousin. My kids loved Julie’s wolves and were appalled by the hunters.
We were working on our next book, Call of the Wild, when a lost, starving, mangy dog showed up on campus one morning before classes started. The dog looked like a wolf, but was very docile and friendly. I took her into the office and, while classes were in session, the Office Ladies called around, trying to figure out where she’d come from.
After school, when I found out the Office Ladies had been unsuccessful at discovering her origin, I offered to take the dog home with me. I thought she might be good company for my other dog, another foundling. But I had competition. The principal had told another teacher he could have her. Next day, that teacher returned her to the school. He admitted he already had several huskies, and they would not allow this one to join their pack. He said they’d nearly killed her. I again offered to take her, but another teacher with more seniority claimed her. I was disappointed, but since I was the lowest status teacher on the list, I acquiesced—or so I thought.
That was on a Friday. I stayed late. All the other teachers had already gone when I shut my classroom door and headed for the parking lot. On the way, I happened to run into the custodian. Just on a hunch, I asked him if he knew of a dog on campus. He said he thought he might have seen one in one of the unused classrooms, but he didn’t know whose it was, or if it was still there.
“Show me,” I said.
I had a spooky feeling as the custodian turned the key in the lock. He opened the door. The room was dark. At first, I thought the room was empty. Then I saw her—quietly, calmly waiting for me. A thick, palpable atmosphere of Destiny hovered in the room. A Spirit animal.
The fifty-minute drive home over treacherous, narrow, winding Highway 17 with a wild dog bounding all around the car was challenging. I got her to a vet that evening, and we put her on a special life-saving diet. “This dog appears to be a purebred Siberian Husky,” the vet determined. “Less than a year old. And she’s close to starving to death. It’s going to take some work to save her.”
I kept bringing her back and forth from home to school with me for several weeks, thinking the person who lost her might turn up. I never quite understood why the second teacher who had claimed her decided to leave her at school that Friday night, without mentioning it to anyone. The dog probably would not have survived alone without food or water all weekend.
I assigned my students independent reports on Alaska, while we did our “into, through, beyond” reading of Call of the Wild. I had those wonderful English teacher posters around the walls, defining the Elements of Literature: setting, plot, theme, character, climax, denouement, poetic justice, antagonist, conflict, allusion, irony . . . The kids were having a hard time understanding “irony.”
Several of my students brought in a news item stating that the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, had just put a bounty on wolves and was encouraging people to hunt them by plane.
Outrage boiled through the room. “What should we do about this?” I asked.
“Maybe we could write letters!”
“Write to whom?” I asked. That stumped them. I taught them how to contact their congressperson, Zoe Lofgren, and they wrote impassioned letters asking her to ban aerial hunting of wolves. She wrote back to every student, announcing that she was co-sponsoring a bill to do just that.
When my principal let me know I had to stop bringing the dog to school, I told my students it was time to say goodbye to their “wolf,” and I asked them to think of a name for her.
“Sarah!” they all agreed. “Name her Sarah. That would be ironic!”
Needless to say, they all got an “A” for “Irony.”
Sarah came home to live with my partner and me permanently. I retired from teaching a year later and finally had time to focus on the novel that had been tormenting me for years.
I co-opted the little back room in our cottage, holed up and wrote every day, from about 7:30 in the morning until at least 1 in the afternoon. Every day, Sarah chose to follow me as I carried my morning coffee into my “Writing Room” and faithfully sat with me while I worked. She was my muse. She even insinuated herself onto the pages of my novel, as the husky Bella.
The novel was finally published in October, 2019, after nearly ten years of work. November and December brought a flurry of launch parties, radio appearances, and readings. The 45th President of the U.S. got impeached. Our country was in turmoil, divided, coming apart at the seams. It began to feel as if the grand experiment in American Democracy might die.
On December 22nd, after our big brunch, Joe insisted that even though there were intermittent drizzles and we had a busy day ahead, we should all go up to Sky Road, our favorite hike, up a steep farm road into the coastal mountains north of town. “All,” at one time, used to also include our other intensely loved dog, adorable little Corgi-mix foundling, Smoky—aka Mr. Wonderful.
But Smoky had died of kidney failure a year and a half earlier. Such guilt and regret because I didn’t pay the money to have him tested right away, when I first sensed that there was 
something wrong! I delayed too long. While I was away at a writing conference, Smoky collapsed. Joe rushed him across town to the 24-hour emergency vet and plunked down $7,000 on his credit card without hesitation for treatment and hospitalization, only to find out there was nothing more to do but take Smoky home and put him on nightly fluid injections.
We did those fluid injections, the whole family—me, Joe, Sarah, and Smoky—gathered every evening in our tiny bathroom. At first we hung the bag on the shower curtain rod, but ultimately we found it worked best when tall Joe stood and held the bag high overhead for thirty minutes while the fluid dripped into Smoky; me sitting on the floor with our stoic, heroic, uncomplaining, unconditionally-loving little Smoky on my lap. He seemed to understand that we just couldn’t let him go yet. Every evening during fluid injection time, Sarah voluntarily joined us, sitting stretched out with her paws in front of her in a posture of attentive, watchful caring.
Smoky rallied. He enthusiastically accompanied us on our Sky Road walks. But the respite was brief. After about two months, at age thirteen, he could no longer stand on his own. We had to take him to be “put to sleep.” At the advice of friends, we brought Sarah with us. The vet was compassionate. We had a long time to say tearful goodbyes. Fingers wrapped in his adorable fluffiness, Joe and I watched Smoky’s eyes fade and felt his spirit pass away. Sarah was clearly aware of what was transpiring. I felt that she seemed troubled by the experience.
So, on the day before the day before Christmas Eve, the first day of Hanukkah, the three of us set out for Sky Road in the “Dog-mobile,” our nine-year old Prius. (Dog-mobile, aka Frog-mobile, is our second car, the one the dogs are allowed in. Our good car is an all-electric Chevy Bolt—no gas, no oil.) Hay to winterize our wannabe urban micro-farm’s chicken coop, from a recent transport from Westside Feed Store, still littered Dog-mobile’s hatchback compartment, where Sarah rode. “Sarah, you’re a farm dog. You good girl, you.”
Sarah could no longer leap with joyful vigor from the ground straight into the open hatchback, so we had developed adaptations and accommodations.
These days, with effort she climbed through the back door of the Prius, clambered onto the back seat, stepping first onto the car floor littered with my walking sticks, her backpacking doggy water bowl, and miscellaneous paraphernalia.
With a little help from me gently pushing on her back side, and on her bad days—despite my own bad back—me hoisting her a bit, she’d scramble into the dog mobile. Then we’d followed the complicated (and painful on my bad back) ritual of guiding her through the pulled-down seatback into the rear compartment, and closing up the back seat. Joe hated cooping her up in that small space, but I insisted on it for her safety. I figured eventually I’d spend the money on one of those fancy dog car set-ups with extra space and a ramp.
As we pulled away from the curb, setting off for the North Coast, we’d always say, “We’re going for a Walk, Sarah! Going to Sky Road!” And Sarah would drape her front paws over the back seat 
in what Joe called a “jaunty” angle, and she’d lift her head and howl for joy. Sometimes we howled with her. Even on cold and wet days, we’d roll the windows partly down so she could have her ‘AAIRRRRE,” as Joe would say.
Sarah usually kept up her howling song all the way up the coast. She never did learn to properly ride in a car. From the first time I drove her home, car rides with her were always a wild ruckus. At one point, I tried electric shock collars on both her and Smoky, who was always triggered by Sarah’s wolfly howls to set up a gleeful barking song of his own. The two of them would get going and raise a deafening cacophonous duet. Sometimes it was funny, and when they made me laugh, that spurred them on to greater operatic heights. As hard as the cacophony was on our nerves, shock collars didn’t feel right, and were soon abandoned.
I always meant to take the situation in hand and put my dogs through proper training school. I told myself I’d do it when I had the time, the money. They would have loved it. Sarah and Smoky loved to please us. They adored doing the little tricks we practiced, with treats. Sit. Down. Shake. Stay. I regret that I never got around to enrolling us in a dog-training program or joining a dog sledding club. Regret. Guilt. The impotent futility of good intentions unfulfilled. Now that it’s too late, I could smother in my regrets. But I will not.
Sky Road is a private gated road, up Highway 1 north of Santa Cruz, past the old whaling village of Davenport Landing. The mostly-paved Sky Road winds up into the coastal hills where some of the most epic original organic farms still operate – Molino Creek, famous for its dry-farmed tomatoes, and (ironically) Two Dog Farms. Friends from Two Dog Farm long ago gave Joe the code to the gate lock. The long curving road, mostly absent of people and cars—with some steep uphill stretches, rolling waves of pasture, coastal redwoods, breathtaking views of ocean, and often whales—is an ideal place to walk for exercise.
When we were younger and stronger, we used to park at the bottom, walk up past The Rock overlook to The Fork, then hike back down to the car—about four miles in all.
But in recent years, Joe prefers to avoid the downhill, to save his knees. He starts walking from the bottom while Sarah and I drive up to The Fork, park and walk down, turning around when we meet Joe to follow him back up to the car. After my back surgery, I couldn’t get very far at first. Now, I can usually make almost two miles— across the upper cattle guard, past the spooky grove of oak trees, to The Rock, then back up.
Until about a month ago, I felt confident in letting Sarah walk Sky Road off leash. In summer, there were ticks to worry about, but Sarah’s monthly oral tick preventative mostly kept them at bay. (Of course, I worried that the tick medicine might make her sick, maybe give her cancer. But “No, Perfectly saaafe,” they said.)
Sky Road cuts through an enormous 5,843-acre parcel of land along the north coast of Santa Cruz County that includes historic Cotoni Ranch and Coast Dairies property. Fearful of looming development pressure on the gorgeous wild coast land, the public recently voted to designate it as a National Monument—to the consternation of the people, now inholders, who live up there. Pioneer organic farmers and landowners, some of whose property rights date nearly back to the whaling days of the 1800’s, have little trust for the BLM and Cal Department of Fish and Wildlife, the new managers of their sacred land. We hope this land will retain its serene beauty long into the future, but I know things change. I’m grateful to be here now.
Since 1835, when the rancho was a Mexican land grant, cows have grazed on the coastal hills. There are still cows grazing on the Coast Dairies land —mamas, babies, and occasionally bulls with impressive nether parts. I don’t know who owns them now. I worry that they are destined to be eaten, and I tell them when I pass close by them on the road that I’m not going to hurt them. The cows always delighted Sarah. She was especially curious about two very fine black cows with stark white faces and their adorable calves, mouths white with mothers’ milk, whom we often encountered on our walk. Once, I stretched out my hand and a brave calf licked it.
Sometimes, Sarah would stray off the road onto the pasture to get a closer look at the cows. Like watching a scene from the film Dances with Wolves, I’d watch beautiful Sarah sprint across the coastal hills. When I called her, she’d always come right back to me, until . . .
One day last November, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Sarah the Husky joyfully prancing through the tall pasture grasses, her black and white skunk-striped tail straight up and waving like a flag, ears and nose pricked with excitement by rustlings of quail and other wildlings invisible to my senses. I became distracted and entangled by my thoughts, and by the exquisite view out to the bay. When I turned back to look for Sarah, she had disappeared. I called and called. She didn’t come. Fear surged through me.
Disregarding the trepidation of the old woman worried about falling, in whose body I weirdly found myself, I stepped cautiously off the road onto uneven ground where I had never ventured before. I pressed on further and further from the safety of the road, tromping through hostile grasses, calling, calling with ever more urgency. Panic rose through me. I became desperate, then desolate with foreboding. The sun was setting. It would be impossible to find her out here in the empty black pasture land at night. If I didn’t get back to the road soon, I might not be able to find my way.
Off to my right a steep wooded ravine loomed, with treacherous erosion gullies crisscrossing it. I feared that Sarah had fallen and, weakened by arthritis, would be unable to climb out.
“Come back, Sarah! Sarah, come back. I love you Sarah!” I shouted into the emptiness, until my throat ached. Like a boot on my chest, the encroaching dark was crushing my hope. Terror. Was Sarah gone? Would I never see her again? Had she vanished into the wilderness? Had she gone off by herself intentionally, to die?
I heard Joe’s whistle. “I’ve got Sarah!” he shouted.
Relief washed through me, along with that shaky feeling of adrenaline leaving the system. Such joy to have a loved one, who had been lost, found and returned! The gift of redemption. Resurrection. Love not lost after all.
I had a deja vu moment, a memory of a dream where a deceased loved one shows up in your house as if they had never died. Tearful, joyous, incredulous, a little afraid, you say, “But I thought you were dead.”
In the days following that hike, Sarah developed a new, pronounced limp on her front foot. Joe worried that she might have something stuck in her paw and he wanted us to take her to a vet. We’d been uncomfortable with patronizing corporate VCA for years, and so had tried various local family-owned vets, looking for a better fit. But Sarah had had a relationship with Dr. R at VCA since that night I’d first brought her home, so I decided we should take her back there. On Sarah’s last vet visit, Dr. R had recommended a “senior blood panel,” but I’d declined because of the expense. Now, I decided we should have that blood work done.
Dr. R examined her, drew blood, and pronounced that there was nothing stuck in her paw and her limp was probably from worsening arthritis—now not only in her lower spine and back hips but also in her front shoulders. Dr. R recommended a whole-body x-ray, to follow up on the one they had done a year ago. “We will need to sedate her for the x-ray,” she said.
Joe and I consented and left Sarah with the vet. Mistake.
When I picked Sarah up a few hours later, something was terribly wrong. She spent the next two days screaming and crying, vomiting and refusing food. I called the vet back and they told me she was probably just having a bad reaction to the sedative, which should wear off, and to boil some chicken and give her the broth along with a little of the chicken and maybe some plain steamed rice.
A few days later, Dr. R informed us that the x-ray revealed a mass on Sarah’s spleen, something that had not been detected a year ago. She recommended that the spleen be surgically removed. She stated that, even if the mass were benign, there was a strong probability it would rupture and the spleen would bleed, causing death. She also said that if malignant, the malignant cells could migrate elsewhere; even during surgery, some malignant cells could escape and migrate elsewhere. Oh hideous disease! Scourge of our age. Joe and I consented to the surgery and made an appointment for a specialist to do the procedure as soon as he was available, on January 15.
Within a few days, Sarah was back to her happy, peaceful, playful self and was eating normally again.
Those weeks before Christmas, we took frequent walks on Sky Road. We’d often get a late start and end the walks in the dark. Joe loved reveling in the starry December night sky.
I was keeping Sarah leashed in her harness at this point, not wanting her to repeat her recent vanishing act. Leashed to Sarah, I wasn’t afraid walking alone in the dark along the coyote and
mountain lion inhabited mountain road, even going past the spooky oak grove, even when we heard the coyotes howling, saw their glowing yellow eyes peering at us through the dark.
I felt safe, happy, and at peace, grateful for nature’s beauty and Sarah’s companionship. I knew my Guardian Spirit animal would protect me.
We had no idea that drizzly afternoon on the first day of Hanukkah was to be our last walk with Sarah. I left Joe just inside the gate at the bottom of the hill to start his muddy trudge up the road, and drove up to the turnoff below the second cattle guard.
Staying zen centered all the while Sarah kept up her excited-going-for-a-walk cacophonous howls, I parked, pulled on an extra sweater and my rain slicker, and went through the ritual of pulling down the back seat back, guiding Sarah through, putting the seat back up, and escorting Sarah out of the car. She was more nimble than usual. We trotted along in the gentle wisps of drizzle.
I watched Sarah sniff a big wet cow pie and then, before I could pull her away, she’d buried her muzzle in it! “Drop it! Sarah! No! Bad girl! Drop it!” I grabbed her head, pried open her mouth, and tried to empty it of wet cow poo. She managed to keep some, and it was crunchy. Down the road, I wiped a glop of poo off her mouth with a sprig of lizard tongue leaves. She seemed to take great pleasure in the whole process. (Later, the vet told me that eating the cow pie definitely did not hurt her and “She probably really enjoyed it.”) Ah the dog’s life!
We spotted Joe coming up hill around the bend past the oak grove’s spooky black shadows. Sun glinted off the ocean below, backlighting Joe’s lion mane of white hair like a halo. He whistled, and Sarah perked up her ears and pulled at her harness. I clicked a photo of her lunging toward him with all the great love and devotion, the being-right-here-right-now enthusiasm she had.
We took a moment to admire the view, then Sarah and I turned around and headed back up the road. When we reached the dog-mobile, we climbed back in, happy in spite of our arthritic aches and pains, and bumped over the second cattle guard up to the fork to meet Joe at the top of his walk. After another joyful reunion, we wove down the farm road toward the coast road, and through the gate, Sarah settling down peacefully as we cruised home.
Joe and I showered and dressed in fancy holiday clothes. We fed Sarah and left her content in her plush extra-large LL Bean dog bed, with the run of the house and an open doggy door to 
the back garden. We visited our sick friend John and his wife Vicki then went on to celebrate our godson Chris’ birthday with an extravagant hibachi dinner at Benihana in Monterey. Since Joe was booked on a morning flight to D.C., this was to be our last night together for the holidays.
Returning home, we looked forward, as always, to opening the front door and finding Sarah right there on the other side, faithfully and lovingly waiting for us. (“How do they always know when we’re coming home?” we asked each other for the millionth time.) There she was, circling her tail, jumping, snuffling and laughing, sniffing us to find out where we’d been and what treats we may have brought her, doing her happy dance.
Joe headed for the back of the house to change, and with a bow, Sarah challenged me to a game of chase around the living room. We had a fun, lively game, then Sarah leapt joyfully onto her bed, smiling, and I turned away. She screamed. I ran to her. She was convulsing and crying. Joe rushed to her side. Within minutes, the Life Force that animated the being called Sarah had passed out of her body.
Hoping she might still be revived, Joe and I lifted her, in her bed, to the car, and raced death to the 24-hour vet. The veterinarian put a stethoscope to her chest and told us our spirit child was not going to come back. “Why did she die?” we cried. The vet did an ultrasound; it appeared that Sarah’s heart had exploded.
A hole in my heart gushed open, a pain that will will never heal. Everyone who’s ever felt this kind of loss will understand. Grief is universal. The realization that she’s gone leaps through me, presses a crushing knee on my throat. 
Death took her so fast, as if an invisible hand reached out of the ether, grabbed her, and snatched her away into the realm of invisibility, before we could save her.
Christmas. After Christmas dinner, desert, and wine, when the kids had all gone to bed, Joe asked, “Do you think dogs can be reincarnated?”
Our friend Jim replied that, on the third day after his father died, he wondered if his dad could be resurrected. “It happened once before,” Jim said. Jim has a strange sense of humor.
“Apparently,” I responded, “it’s a common human reaction to death—to want the one you lost to come back; you actually almost convince yourself that they could.”
I get the creeps when I think of Daenerys, in Game of Thrones, doing dark magic to bring her husband back to life. It did not go well for them. Dead is dead. Don’t mess with that. Maybe it’s not healthy to keep trying to hold Sarah’s spirt near. Let her pass over.
But we see Sarah everywhere and feel her presence palpably. Jim’s wife Linda shared that when her brother died, she saw a membrane before her, and her brother just on the other side of the membrane. When she put her hands up to it, she could feel his warmth emanating through the membrane. Christmas night, when the kids were sleeping and the last bottle of good wine was almost empty, we talked about the feeling that birth and death both originate on the other side of that membrane, which is sometimes referred to as “The Veil.”
Sarah has been gone for a week now. She always insisted on being with me while I took a shower. Joe and would laugh about it, wondering what our silly dog was thinking. I was in the shower this evening and I saw her looking at me through the clear vinyl shower curtain. She’s there, on the other side of the Veil. She sees me, like I’m underneath the ice, but she can’t get to me.
Joe has been continuously sharing his remembrances with me—small details about Sarah and our life with her. “I don’t want to forget her,” he says. We slosh around in our memories and regrets. Things we didn’t do for her that we feel we should have, wish we had. And things we did do that seem like mistakes. Not leaving her home alone so much, and more walks top the list of “should haves.” But especially we remember the good moments.
Sarah’s death, it turns out, is only the beginning of not just a personal but a global Death March. Apparently the Universe has not finished with this lesson.
I had been keeping chickens for nearly fifteen years, adding new chicks to my flock when old 
ones passed on. Chickens imbue a place with such a sense of peace and comfort. At the time of Sarah’s death, there were only two old girls in my coop—Henny Penny, the Speckled English Sussex, and the little Arcana Huffy Fluffy Buffy. A couple of days after Sarah’s death, I went out to feed the chickens and discovered that some creature or other (probably that family of raccoons) had broken into their coop and massacred them.
In our house is an emptiness as deep as the Universe, as if Sarah pulled the air around her down with her through a black hole when she left, even taking the chickens with her.
On a gloomy winter drive up to Sky Road, we listen to Allan Watts on the radio talking about death. Ram Dass, who wrote Be Here Now has just died. Watts (d. 1973) tells us that Krishnamurti (d. 1986) says that death is forever. Death is nothing, there is nothing after that, says Watts, just nothing. You die and just no longer exist. If you understand that, you understand non-attachment.
No. I cannot accept that. I need a story. Sarah’s spirit is with me and my mom and dad are forgiven and are waiting for me in heaven.
I need a story like that song, “Old Blue.” “I had a dog and his name was Blue. Betcha five dollars he’s a good dog, too. He chased a possum up a wide oak limb, sat right down and sang to him. When ol’ Bue died he died so hard, it shook the ground in my back yard. When I get to heaven, I know what I’ll do. I’ll grab my horn and call for Blue. Oh, Here Blue! You’re a good dog, you. Bye bye Blue, you good dog, you.”
The song makes me cry.
I drop off Joe at the bottom of Sky Road. Up at the fork at the usual spot, I park and get out of the car, heart aching. I call to Sarah, call out loud, “Here Sarah!” Aching to see her trotting out from behind a bush, swaying back and forth as she ambles, smiling, around the bend in the road. she’s gone. she’s gone forever gone.
A couple of days later, I happen upon a YouTube video of Eckhart Tolle talking about What Happens When We Die. Turns out ,the talk centers around the death of a dog. Tolle says many people have a stronger emotional reaction to the death of a dog than to the death of a beloved human—maybe because our relationship with non-human animals is less complex. Dogs are more capable of unconditional love that humans are. Tolle says we are all part of One Consciousness. Everything, everyone—people, animals, trees—all of it. And the FORM that spirit chooses to inhabit, these various bodies, is not the Thing. Let go of attachment to Form. It is really all about Spirit. And Spirit—Pure Love—does go on, like in the love song from Titanic. All of us—all Spirit —is connected, eternally. Is. One. Love.
Joe and I eat kettle corn and watch a movie called “A Dog’s Purpose.” Yes, the film assures us, dogs can be reincarnated. We’re comforted.
We’ve been picking up handfuls of Husky fur from the floors, couches, along baseboards, in corners, behind doors . . . Huskies are massive shedders. Even after numerous vacuumings, we’re finding Sarah’s fur. We’re saving a ball of her fur to put with her ashes, once we get the ashes back from the pet crematorium. On the piano next to the orchid our friend Linda gave us for Sarah’s memorial, we have a special container for some of Sarah’s fur, and there’s a place out on the patio next to Smoky’s ashes ready for Sarah’s clay urn.
I vacuum her rug and the place where she had her food. While I vacuum, I feel that deep ache like a cannonball in my chest. 
This morning, I found Henny Penny’s carcass where they left it, behind the pond, after dragging it around all night, judging from the trail of feathers.
Henny Penny had the most beautiful feathers—iridescent in the sun. Nothing much left but legs and white chicken feet, and a gaping breastbone cavity. Joe fetched it and I buried it in the nasturtium patch by the rock wall next to the old raspberry vines.
Today I put Sarah’s fur in the garden for nesting birds to take. Is my Spirit Animal, my beloved changeling child, truly gone forever?
I sit in my garden, staring into the black hole. The Ant People come out of their burrow near the deserted chicken coop to remind me of the importance of Community, Patience and Trust, and tell me to Honor the Will of Great Spirit. I search for meaning, help, solace. Consult oracles. Page through books and visit the YouTube channels of spiritual teachers.
According to Shamanic wisdom, I discover, Dog Medicine is this: Nobel. Loyal. True friend. Companion. Protector. Provider of comfort and warmth. Dog is the Soldier guarding the Tribe’s lodges, a Servant of Humanity. Dog calls you to Service to Others, to Practice Compassion.
I open my deck of Animal Medicine cards. I draw Dog. Dog asks, “Have you remembered that you owe your allegiance to your Personal Truth in life? Is your sense of loyalty to your Truth countermanded by your need for approval? It is time to stop cowering in fear; time to tackle the adversaries of your confidence. These are not external enemies but thought forms in your own mind, telling you you’re not worthy. Examine the patterns of fear — particularly the fear of not belonging, being alone, or not being approved of. Reclaim the power of loyalty to Self and Self-Truths. Live as though your Guardian Spirit Dog is always by your side.”
I cast the I Ching. The Tao of Change. I receive Sun K’an—Gentle Wind over The Well, Abysmal Water—changing to Ch’ien—the Creative Heaven: “Dispersing and dissolving into foam and mist, Cross the Great Water. The King approaches the Temple. Perseverance furthers. Free of all selfish ulterior considerations and persevering in justice and steadfastness, she dissolves divisive egotism and cupidity, and leads the way to gathering together. Take quick and vigorous action to dissolve misunderstandings and mutual distrust. Religious forces are needed, sacred rites and music, awakening a consciousness of the common origin of all creatures. Shaken with religious awe in the face of eternity — stirred with an intuition of the One Creator of All Living Beings, united through a strong feeling of fellowship, she seizes and softens the hearts of humans, bringing help and good fortune. No remorse. Self dissolves. Set aside personal desires. Set your goal in a great task outside yourself. Success through gentleness. Keep the tyrant in check. Blessings to the land. Thunder at the foot of the Mountain. Nourish the Self, the body and spirit, and provide nourishment to others in a higher, spiritual sense.”
I take this to be my homework, going forward.
January 2020. 
So the old year, the first decade of the Twenty-first Century, has died.
History shows us that the fourtyish-year millennial turnaround between centuries is often fraught with incredibly intense psychic, spiritual, political, scientific, and artistic energy. That millennial transition cycle has clearly been at play this time around. The Twentieth to the Twenty-first Century trolley car is now grinding its gears and winding down to change directions. Some old ways are undergoing gargantuan death throes, as we fully get our arms around what this new century has birthed.
No longer tied to the responsibility of caring for anyone besides ourselves, Joe and I decided to devote all of 2020—all the way up to the November Presidential election—to political work. We connected with SwingLeft.org and Indivisible and, in mid-January, bought a plane ticket to Arizona.
We stayed outside of Phoenix in the suburb of Mesa, on the edge of the desert in the gorgeous home of perfect strangers, wonderful, generous people—Paul, a native Arizonian and wealthy builder/contractor and a skilled potter and his wife Rhonda— self-described “New York Jew,” passionate Bernie Sanders supporter, and talented artist with a delightfully flamboyant sense of color, and a sense of humor rivaling the amazing Mrs. Mazel.
In Arizona, we campaigned for Bernie and for Mark Kelly for U.S. Senate. Kelly’s wife is former U.S. Senator Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head by right wing domestic terrorists, but recovered and still persists, doing good work for the people of her country. We got to meet Kelly and Giffords and the national director of Planned Parenthood at a La Lucha fundraiser. Such incredibly good people—courageous and honorable. With a dynamic organization called Field Team 6, we registered voters on community college campuses. Delightful conversations with young folks. Took one afternoon off to hike a mountain in the pristine desert.
We returned home energized, and ready to do another trip in early March to the Swing states of Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia, determined to help flip the Senate from Red to Blue, and oust some of the worst evil doers like Mitch McConnell. We joined the radical global climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion and participated in a Divest from Fossil Fuels Now demonstration against Chase Bank. We met with like-minded people and wrote postcards and made phone calls to voters in Swing States. We worked as election clerks during the Super Tuesday California primary.
We made plans to do another trip. We bought plane tickets to fly to Georgia in early March and received an invitation to stay with friends of friends on an organic farm outside of Atlanta. We hoped to connect with Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight election protection organization and to campaign for the Senate race of Reverend Raphael Warnock, pastor at Martin Luther King Jr’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. Then we planned to rent a car and take our time driving through rural areas, meeting and talking with fellow Americans on a kind of Travels with Charlie, Simon and Garfunkel “off to look for America” journey through the Carolinas, Kentucky, and Virginia, finally landing in Joe’s sister’s home outside of Washington DC. at the end of April.
February – March.
I felt energized, and thought I’d finally left death behind me when, in late February, Chris Goddard, a dear long-time member of my writing group, suddenly died.
On March 1st, about two weeks before we were scheduled to fly away, I attended his memorial. Lots of interesting and creative people gathered on the patio of Chris’ Pleasure Point home overlooking Sunny Cove, including some of the Merry Pranksters—children of Ken Kesey himself. Chris had had startlingly original insights about story to contribute to our writing group, and many of his ideas left their imprint on my novel. The afternoon of his memorial, people hugged freely and shared food from open platters. There was no concern among the guests at this point about germs.
But soon after the memorial, talk of coronavirus began to circulate. On the TV news, we watch its spread through Asia, to Italy and Spain. In early March, Trump doesn’t want to the Princess cruise ship carrying infected Americans to disembark in the US. He says those people would make his numbers look bad. Contradicting the World Health Organization statistics, he says there are only a few coronavirus cases in the US, and this virus is just another flu; for most people it will be very mild, and it will pass quickly.
Trump escalates his disregard for norms and civility, his lack of rational governance. He lies, abuses, steals. He is repulsive. He is killing this country. He says out loud that he is not responsible for helping the American people safely navigate the pandemic. New York Governor Cuomo has been doing nightly FDR style TV chats on national news that make me wish he were our president. Or Bernie. Or Elizabeth. Or Obama. Or Hillary. Or Biden.
California was, I think, the first state to adopt complete social isolation, requiring people to stay home unless designated as essential workers. Gradually, Joe and I have settled into the “sheltering in place” mode. We don’t even go to the grocery store now, ordering what we can get through InstaCart and Amazon, trying to simplify. We were lucky to have plenty of toilet paper on hand when the bizarre run and hoarding of TP hit.
Living in close quarters, physically isolated from friends and family, we’re being forced to confront the rough spots in our thirty-plus year-old relationship. We’re making an effort to be kinder, more compassionate and patient with one another. Learning to love each other and ourselves better. 
We’ve figured out how to decontaminate things that come into our house —packages and even mail—with 70+% alcohol solutions and or bleach. We wash hands frequently with soap and water, disinfect handles, surfaces, phones. We read reports about how long the Covid-19 virus can live on various surfaces. It’s all stressful, but we are grateful for our home, our good health, our beautiful garden and gentle weather, the bountiful fresh organic food available to us, and for each other.
We watch news on our big screen TV, on our computers, and on our smart phones incessantly. I sometimes fall for hours down Twitter or Facebook rabbit holes. I know I shouldn’t. Social media is one of many addictions threatening to take over the unwary housebound.
We try not to get poisoned by the hatred and atrocities perpetrated by the Trumpists and his growing fringe of cult hate groups, de-humanized soulless violent marauders growing more and more empowered daily by Trump’s Tweets.
Through media, we are inspired when we witness the suffering of the sick and dying, and the extreme courage, generosity, and heroism of medical care givers and service providers and hear stories of everyday people being extraordinarily kind to one another. Yet our witnessing is virtual, distant, somewhat unreal. Gradually, we’ve reconnected with friends, family, and community and have frequent meet-ups through Zoom. I’m taking yoga, Tai Chi, and Spanish online.
We shake our heads at the petty selfishness, the ignorance and self-destructive denial of basic science displayed by people refusing to wear masks and shelter in place. But there are also many examples of people in the US and in other countries practicing disciplined cooperation with stalwart maturity, intelligence, compassion, patience, and generosity. It is understandable that people are anxious to “get back to normal.” But we need to use this time to rethink what parts of “normal” we want to get back to and what parts—like air pollution, traffic, and long soul-crushing commutes to jobs we dislike because we need the health insurance—we want to change.
Joe and I still go up to Sky Road as often as we can, grateful we have access to open space and nature. When we first went back to Sky Road without Sarah, we both could actually see her and feel her there. Her energy has now faded, but it’s still there. She’s still with us, although I no longer try to hold on to her, pull her back to me. She’s completely off-leash now, on her own soul journey.
It’s been two years since my back surgery. I grow stronger every day. I can now get all the way from the Fork down past Lookout Rock to the big curve, some days even down as far as the bottom cattle guard—more than a steep mile. Then I huff and puff and clear my sinuses and lungs, lumbering back uphill to the transformers where I park.
With this Sheltering in Place, I tell myself I should have plenty of time to accomplish a lot of things. Somehow, that has not been the case. I bought some Apple wireless Bluetooth earbuds and upgraded my iPhone in anticipation of the journey south we had planned to take. But instead, I now use the new earbuds to strive for self-improvement; and then I strive to stop striving and I work to relax. I listen to music, podcasts, Masters Classes, and meditation tapes while I walk Sky Road. I think about death. And life. Love, resilience, truth and reconciliation, and healing. I think about the Hero’s Journey. And I watch the clouds. I am a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society.
A guru I follow says that the mind can never be still, never achieve silence. No sense trying to become Buddha. He’s already inside you. 
In order to find peace, and enlightenment, one must step outside the mind. (Remember that old Monkees song? “Take a giant step outside your mind.”) The “natural” liberated mind is outside the monkey mind, says the guru. It’s an endless, luminous sky. Imagine snow falling on water. With effortless relaxation let the water settle and clear. Allow mistaken thought forms—anxiety, overreacting, shame, guilt, grief, blame, nobody loves me, I’m a failure — let those thought forms fall away, disolve. Be a fish swimming in the sky: liberation is all around you. You are already there. When desire, agitation, negative memories or emotions, fear, or angry thoughts arise, do not grasp them, do not become entangled, or try to chase them away. Simply notice. Nothing to be attached to. These thought forms are clouds passing across the luminous sky.
By March 20, 160,530 patients have tested positive for Covid-19 and there have been 160,530 covid-19 deaths in the U.S.
April. There’s a lot of advice online about how to cope with this historical global pandemic. It’s like a cancer that’s seized everyone on the planet. Still sheltering in place, I have ventured out twice to the grocery store with a mask on. We try to eat right, exercise, be mindful and present, stay positive. But grief and rage boil inside, and a feeling of powerlessness.
On Passover, a clear day between rainstorms, I light a bonfire in the backyard brazier and burn years-old plum, apple, and cedar pruning’s until late into the night. I bath myself in the woodsmoke, and pray—for myself, for everyone, for all beings. Maybe I let go of some negative thought forms I’ve been holding for a long time.
May – June. The official death toll in the US passed 100,000 over the weekend of May 30.
Our dear friend with cancer is still with us. He’s in his late 80s. A prominent marine scientist; intertidal invertebrates are named after him. Moreover, he is a really, really good person, and a wonderful, wise, compassionate teacher. He has been journaling very openly about his cancer on Caring Bridge. Exposing his most personal moments to teach about the journey of Death and Dying. Breaking one’s silence is a gift given to the world.
Joe and I watched a PBS special about the Spanish Flu last night. Interesting. Here’s a children’s rope skipping rhyme from the period: “I knew a boy and his name was Enza. I opened the door and In-Flu-Enza.” 60 Minutes had a piece about Polio, and another about Holocaust survivors, and how important it is to keep the memory of our history alive. Apparently, humans would rather forget the bad stuff, but it might be useful to remember.
The Covid-19 pandemic is the first time anything this horrific has happened in most of our lifetimes, but as they say, it’s not the first rodeo for the human species. Some of my friends think humans will soon go extinct, that the chaos of these times are the death throes of our species. During the Spanish Flu pandemic, people believed that Spanish Flu was the precursor to Armageddon. Some of my friends think this pandemic, although horrible and deadly, will ultimately prove to be positive and transformative—just the Shock Naomi Klein says is needed to affect great change. I don’t know what’s going to happen.
Climate Change. Global coronavirus pandemic. The Pandemics of Racism and Fascism. I think anything could happen.
Trump is insane, our Mad King. He has taken over the Judicial Branch and owns the Senate. He’s destroyed our clean air and clean water laws and our national monuments; he’s tearing up most of the significant environmental and social justice gains of my lifetime. He is fomenting hate and abuse against non-white, non-Christian, alternate gendered, women, the well-educated, the “liberals,” scientists, and the press.
On March 13th, in Louisville, Kentucky, police burst into the home of a young black woman, Breonna Taylor, and murdered her while she was sleeping. The cops had a warrant for a suspect but got the wrong apartment. When they knocked down her door, Breonna’s boyfriend, who thought their home was being invaded, called 911 and then fired at the presumed intruders. The un-uniformed police blindly sprayed more than 20 shots into the apartment, eight of the bullets hitting Breonna and mutilating her body. The cops then arrested the innocent boyfriend. Just days before she was murdered, Breonna had been honored with an award for her valiant service as a Covid-19 EMT.
A young black jogger was murdered in Georgia in February by a retired white cop and his redneck son. Armed “militia” brandishing Nazi flags, shut down the Michigan and Oregon state legislatures and staged “protests” around the country against state orders to wear masks in public and shelter in place. They issued death threats against Michigan Governor Whitmer and burned her in effigy. Trump is fomenting this violence and hatred, is promoting conspiracy theories, is threatening to take us to war—possibly a war against our own country, against Americans.
On May 25th, in Minneapolis, four white police dragged George Floyd, a black man, out of his car. He did not resist. They handcuffed him, and then one of the cops pushed his knee down onto Floyd’s neck and held it there for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. For five minutes, Floyd pleaded with officer Derek Chauvin to stop and let him up, saying, “I can’t breathe.” He called out for his dead mother. Then he went still. Limp. Lifeless. Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost three minutes more, even after an ambulance finally arrived. Eight minutes and fourty-six seconds before Chauvin let them carry away George Floyd’s body.
The murder was videotaped, and went viral. Demonstrations erupted across the nation. The protests became extremely violent and destructive.
Violating core American values, and encouraged by Trump, police in many areas turned against the press. Viral videotapes show cops firing at reporters, including foreign journalists. A black reporter (but not the white one he was with) was arrested without cause. A female journalist was blinded when shot in the face with rubber-coated metal bullets. A few years ago, these things would have outraged Americans if we’d seen them happening in some other country.
White supremacists and other violent fringe groups, including anarchists, Boogaloos, end-of-the-worlders and even Russians, infiltrated the peaceful protests and escalated violence, trying to blame it on Black Lives Matter protestors.
There are reports that neo-Nazi and alt-right racist groups have been systematically infiltrating police departments for years. Cops in riot gear can be seen on national news flashing Skinhead gang signs and laughing. Of course, not all of USA’s police are sadistic racists. In cities across the country—including Santa Cruz CA, Flint, NYC, Niagara Falls, Orlando, Charlotte, Portland, and Salem—police, sheriffs, mayors, governors, and council members have appeared in the streets taking the Colin Kaepernick knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, protesting peacefully, and marching with demonstrators.
In the heat of the protests, Black Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Tim Scott authored the Emmett Till Antilynching Bill. which passed the House and came before the Senate during the George Flloyd protests. The first antilynching bill, proposed in 1918, failed to pass, but it seemed safe to assume that this time, in midst of the great public outcry over recent police brutality, the bill would be voted into law.
On June 10th, Robert Fuller, just 24 yrs old, was found hanging from a tree outside City Hall in Palmdale, California, a region of Southern California known for white supremacists. At first, officials called the lynchings suicide and tried to cover up because “lynching doesn’t happen in California in the 21st Century.” According to historian Ana North, “One of those major elements of the act of lynching is the silencing.” On the heels of the Robert Fuller lynching, anti-lyncing bill was killed by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
I feel outrage about these things as if it’s the first time they’ve ever happened. But watching the film I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin, and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, I’m reminded that all this has been going on forever. These recent events are skirmishes in the cosmic battle between Good and Evil. But now the battle is surely escalating.
Evil succeeds over and over again in tricking God-fearing people into believing that torturing and killing Blacks, or Jews, immigrants, or anyone different from themselves is good. But hatred and violence is never never never Good.
We are not “the other.” We are all the”other,” the “stranger.” There is no “other,” no “stranger,” except in the monkey mind. We are all the same. We all want love, nurture, safety, a good life. The Form, the outer coverings, the color is not the Thing. Spirit is the thing. We are all Spirit, all One. All connected. To be clear, Good = Love. Evil = Hate
Summer Solstice 2020.
The death toll in the US became the highest in the world in early April and has risen dramatically since then. Over 120,000 covid deaths have been reported in the US as of June 19, 2020. 456,458 deaths worldwide. Almost 9 million cases of covid-19 are now on record worldwide.
It is the Summer Solstice, yet I feel that we are slipping still deeper into bleak Winter. Into Death. Bound and gagged, I watch helplessly as America the Beautiful is raped, tortured. This is the land where my forefathers and mothers were born and died, born and died all the way back to1640. I watch while my motherland loses her soul.
“I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive. I’m forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive. But . . . the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country. (And the future of this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of African Americans.) It is entirely up the the American people . . .” James Baldwin
I do not want to wake up when it’s over, when it’s too late, and realize that I should have done something. “Shoulda coulda woulda if only” I don’t want to live the rest of my life full of regret, knowing that I sat by and watched Democracy die; did nothing, while Fascism forced its knee into my country’s throat. 
I can barely breathe; I feel paralyzed to speak, yet I know I must act now; must break free from this societal and self-imposed silence and do everything in my power to help save not only the soul of my homeland, but the very Life Force of my planet, and all the wondrous beings—children of Mother Earth—with whom I share this home.
What to do? Death still ravages the land, but signs of new growth are already emerging. What will be the nature of the new growth we tend and cultivate—thorny weeds of fear, greed, and hatred or fruits of love?
I’m drawn back to Sky Road, and to my garden, now an unruly but phenomenally productive “urban food forest.” And to my progressive, resilient, diverse community, including the non-human inhabitants who receive so little of our kind attention—bees and bugs, birds, neighborhood wildlife, and plants. And to music. And to books and words, such as those of Alice Walker, who recently said in an interview,
“I would start making peace with the peoples of the planet by trying to understand them. I would like us to be able to say, ‘If that happened to me, I would feel exactly the way you do. And what can we do from here, from this understanding? What can we do together?'”
