Two-part, Curdled Harmony

Last night I was checking my email before bedtime, hunched over the keyboard, oblivious to anything but the letters and images captured on the 15-inch screen in front of my nose. In the distance, but not consciously, I heard the wail of sirens. I thought automatically, "I hope it's not serious ... " and kept on clicking the keys.

From the floor beside me came a quiet little "Oooo-oooo" and Bob Dog began to pull himself up off the carpet where he had been doing his best impression of a throw rug. He moved closer to the window, sat on his haunches and assumed the coyote/wolf position, nose in the air, mouth pursed for a full-on howl.

Did I angrily shush him and keep pounding the keyboard? I most certainly did not. I did what seems to me the far more rational thing: I turned, put my hands on my knees, found my pitch and started "Oooo-oooo-ing" right along. Bob looked over at me, gave a brief, doggy nod -- we've done this enough times that it's become a routine now -- situated himself even more solidly and wailed. I started out on the same pitch, then moved a couple of tones higher. We howled until we ran out of breath, broke off with a lift on the last tone, filled our lungs and went again.

The first sirens were joined by others (I have to check the paper this morning and see what calamity befell us in the night) and soon I could hear other dogs in the distance, singing their ancient, eerie harmony. We wailed and wailed until the siren sound began to taper off. Bob finally stood, sighed, shook his tags and came over to bump my leg with his nose, which is Bob for "Good job. I'll make a coyote of you yet ..."

I developed this habit of singing with Bob a few years back when we lived out in the country and the wailing actually was coyotes. We would hear them starting to yip out in the orchard, the yips would become more and more fevered and would turn into howling, then suddenly, everything went silent. I was amazed by the coordination -- I've sung in ensembles all my life, and to get that many voices to stop at precisely the same moment takes some pretty intense work on the director's part. But they all just ... stop. On some psychic cue -- or maybe just when they catch the rabbit -- it's over.

And last night, with Bob, it was over. He stopped, shook and bumped and was ready to go back to the throw-rug thing. I tried to milk it a little. I could still hear the sirens in the distance. I matched my pitch to them and howled a little. Bob looked at me with exactly the same look I used to give my kids when they had missed a social cue. "That's enough," the look said. "Knock off."

Although Bob is small and cute, he is also all dog, all the time. I don't kid myself about this. I have never subscribed to the Master/Slave relationship with my animal companions. I try half-heartedly to teach them tricks, but they never buy it. They know I'm the boss, enough for all our safety and for sufficient social control to keep my home fit for human habitation ("Do NOT bring that stinky thing in this house," and so forth), but mostly, I just appreciate the company.

After the ruckus died down last night, I noticed that a bird was singing just outside my window. A train whistled in the distance. The breeze coming in the window was caressing and clear. It felt like the high notes Bob and I had just sung.
I had come to my senses, thanks to Bob, ancient instinct and some curdled, two-part harmony.

Coaxed into Wonder by the Dawn's Early Light

When my children were small, I loved to wake them up slowly. Often, I didn’t have time for this during the week, when early mornings devolved into a fevered gallop-to-school, jet-to-work frenzy. But on the weekends, the fever subsided and we had time to smooth some jagged edges. Standing by my son’s and daughter’s beds in the morning, I would watch them dream, dewy and perfect in their rumpled night clothes, smelling their sweet perfection, listening to their baby-child snoring, wondering how I got so lucky. Then, depending on which parts of their bodies were exposed, I’d rub their backs softly, or kiss their toes, stroke their hair and sing-song them gently into a welcoming world.

They’d pretend to be asleep as long as they could, prolonging the wake-up call. When I was kissing her bare shoulders one summer morning, Ariel gave herself away by lifting her hair up so I wouldn’t miss planting a few kisses on her snowy little neck. These scrumptious mornings usually happened on Sundays, when there was absolutely nothing standing outside our door, tapping its foot, insisting that we hurry, hurry, hurry, and they often resulted in french toast collectively created in our tiny kitchen. Those days wove us together, even though, financially and professionally, they were some my darkest days. The connections still hold.

This morning I awoke from a deep sleep as instantly and unmistakably as though someone had called my name. I was already in the process of turning over to face the open window as I woke up, so the first thing I saw was the morning sky. The vibrant color hit me like heat from a just-opened oven. The sky was pure tangerine, a day-glo feast so fake you’d never get away with it on canvas. Black velvet, maybe. Canvas, no.

I walked downstairs to let Bob Dog out and once again the color jolted me, then drew me outdoors, oblivious to what the neighbors would think to see this pixilated woman in her pajamas, beguiled by the dawn’s gaudy light. The air itself seemed suffused with peach and pink and orange, as though I had awakened on a redecorated planet, the old blue and green scheme replaced by something more dramatic, more happening, more now.

This happens often, this sudden awakening just as I’m turning over to look to the east. It’s why I leave the blinds open, why I find it hard to sleep in no matter how late I’ve hit the hay. But the question I find myself turning over in my mind is, what is it that wakes me? I’m asleep, with my back to the window. What is it that whispers in my ear, “Wake up, wake up, wake up. I have something wonderful to show you ...” and has me open my eyes just at the moment of splendor? Is it me that wakes me up or does It? And if it’s It, why does it wake me? Does it want me to do something, or does it just want some company? Does it need to hear an exuberant, affirming “Oh WOW!!!!” on days when it’s popped out a particularly remarkable dawn?

Or perhaps It is the mother and I the slumbering child. It hovers beside my snoozing self, caressing my back, tugging on my bare toe, coaxing me into a welcoming world full of secrets and satisfactions and deep mystery. I feel knitted up, embraced, included.

I wonder how I got so lucky. And I bless the ties that bind.

–kc

The Awe-Inspiring Awkwardness of the Moose

Once, when I was riding my bike in the Alaska wilderness (I love writing that. It sounds as though I routinely ride my bike in the Alaska wilderness and on this particular ride just happened to see something noteworthy. The truth is, it was my one and only bike trip in the Alaskan outback, and it was five years ago. But just that one brief adventure provided me with enough Great Big Wows to supply my storehouse in case I'm ever feeling a deficit of awe in my life), I rounded a curve in the road and saw a moose standing in a stream. At first, I was confused because I saw this enormous form in the water, but it didn't have a head, and for a few seconds I thought maybe it was just a very interesting stump that looked like a four-legged animal with no head. Then, with a great whoosh, it pulled its head out of the water and there stood this other-worldly creature that looked like a committee had hurriedly thrown together an animal before it moved on to the next task on the agenda.

Having lived in Wyoming for several years, I had seen a few moose from a distance. I was a newspaper editor at the time and I had seen plenty of photos of moose, often to accompany articles about how some guy from New Jersey had gotten himself turned into tourist carpaccio trying to have his picture taken petting one of Yellowstone's moose. (I learned an important lesson during those days: Just because you've seen an animal for years on Animal Planet and National Geographic Specials doesn't mean its domesticated. Moose are wild animals. They are also huge. If they aren't huge, they are probably babies, which means a vigilant mom-moose is somewhere nearby. You do not want to run into one of these: Protective ain't the half of it.)

But I had never seen a moose close enough to really grasp mooseness. And then, I rounded that curve in Alaska and there was this creature, standing in a stream only two feet or so deep. It raised its head out of the water with a great swoosh and calmly surveyed the scene, which by this time included a very quiet cyclist about 100 yards away. The thing I remember most vividly was the green glop hanging from its mouth -- moss and other vegetation it had been diligently harvesting from the stream. It looked like a bale of spinach had been broken open and draped around the moose's mouth for effect.

Then, because it wasn't going anywhere and I wasn't about to, I began to study it. Honestly, from just about any angle, a moose looks completely impossible. Its antlers were so flat and even, they looked like they were missing a part -- a shelf, maybe, or a satellite dish. Its skinny little legs didn't look designed to hold up that muscular body and its snout was about six inches longer than seemed proportional -- although with moose, proportional is relative. I kept judging it by deer terms, then by cow terms, then by elk or horse or mule terms and found it just not measuring up. That dowager's hump between the shoulders, the aardvark nose, the muley-looking ears, that glistening sable coat getting lighter as the air dried it? This was one peculiar-looking creature.

Then it lifted its head higher and slowly made an arc parallel with the ground, looking unhurriedly from left to right, majestic in a doofus kind of way. One of Alaska's redundantly spectacular mountain ranges (they're everywhere, absolutely everywhere) formed a jaw-dropping backdrop, the stream cut through relatively open land, this creature was the biggest thing for miles around and it was all so beautiful I barely felt the need to breathe. I was completely at peace and completely happy and if I had died right then and there, I would have immediately rounded base into Valhalla, I just know it.

I stood there for I don't know how long, one of those liminal moments in which time recedes and you're just standing in successive slices of now, now, now. Eventually, a nagging thought started the clock ticking again: My friends were ahead of me and getting farther away by the moment. I didn't know what the correct behavior is when one is less than 100 yards downwind from a moose. As I was contemplating what to do next, the moose dipped its head under the water for another quick nip and I decided the time had come to exit stage right.

My bliss quickly faded as the ruts in the road became more pronounced and that mountain range became the next feature on my itinerary. I eventually caught up with my friends -- at the top of a hill, where they immediately shushed my excited burbling with an admonition that there was a fresh moose kill in the bushes just off the side of the road, which meant bear which meant that bear dinner was probably still a happening thing and we might be dessert if we didn't high-tail it. So we did; that chapter in my adventure closed and a new, more adrenalin-drenched one began.

But that moment is always subcutaneous in my mind and heart, just beneath the surface, fresh as the day I first rounded that corner, filling me with amazement, gratitude and an appreciation of my own spirit. I hadn't trained enough for this bike trip -- a reality that clunked in with a thud after about the first hour on the road. My asthma was acting up, my knee wasn't all that happy and just the airfare to Anchorage had taken a chunk out of my sparse savings. But here I was, hundreds of miles from nowhere. And right back there was a moose.

Oh, wow. You betcha.