This morning a neighbor borrowed Stellar’s “neck pillow,” the donut collar that keeps a dog from licking a wound, for his dog. Meanwhile, I was working on “The Dogs Dinner Party” puzzle, which I started yesterday, on Stellar’s ten years old birthday.

It started out as an ordinary neighborhood adventure. Billie called this afternoon to see if I might know whose dog was wailing in the cattails at the bottom of our canyon, directly below their deck. Big dog, red collar, tangled in the cattails. They were both sick, and Ken couldn’t go down there today.

He looked pale and drawn when Fred and I pulled up in front of their house. Not the hearty lumberjack who just weeks ago spent three days trimming junipers around my house. He showed us through the gate and to the path down the steep slope from their house to the creek below. I followed Fred, planting my walking poles below me and cautiously clambering down the slippery slope, soft dirt and small rocks sliding, big rocks and bushes, deadfall.

Fred went on and I stopped near the bottom to call Ken. Can you see the dog? 

I can’t believe he’s quiet, Ken said. He’s been barking for a loooong time… From his vantage on the deck far above, and from ours, no one could see a sign of the dog, and there was no sound. I stayed on the phone with Ken, while Fred looked for a crossing.

Eventually he just waded ankle deep through the rusty muck of the creek, and walked into the oak brush alongside the cattails. Shhh ~ he held up his hand. A faint whine. He moved along the back side of the cattails. Where are ya, buddy? Ah! He found him, and spent a few minutes unwinding the 20 feet of thick rope attached to him. I could see the dog through the thicket wiggling happily as Fred moved among the cattails. I was suffused with good feelings of neighbors coming together to help neighbors.

Can you see man or dog in this photo? They’re both there. Maybe it’s easier to see them in the next one. Or the next one.

A twenty-foot length of thick rope attached to the dog’s collar had tangled and trapped him in the thick cattails in the creek bottom.

About midway up the canyon wall. The cattail patch from the first two images is a small splotch near the center of this one, just below the biggest patch of snow.

We both knew the dog and where he lives. I got in the back of the truck with the dog, and checked his tag for the phone number. I called to make sure someone was home. Have you been looking for a dog? We’ve got him. He was tangled up in the bottom of the canyon.

“He broke his leash,” the guy said. Leash? Broke? The rope was sound, brass fittings on each end.

I know, I didn’t need to say to him, He would have died— Anyway, he interrupted me before I could finish the sentence, with No he wouldn’t! I would’ve found him! (Really? Before dark? When you weren’t even outside looking? Before he froze to death stuck in the mud overnight? Before a lion came for the siren song of his helpless whimper? Would you have known right where to look? Could you have seen him in that thicket if he couldn’t come to you? What if he went quiet then?)

When we dropped the dog off the man offered us another hostile thank you. Fred is a much better Buddhist than I am, and he doesn’t even try. He affably handed over the dog, No trouble. [oh yeah? I’ll be feeling that climb later tonight.] Chatting cheerily about the dogs by name. Being neighborly.

Hey, I said, trying to smooth things over. I wasn’t being critical— He cut me off again so I couldn’t finish the thought. Well that’s what it felt like! he snapped. It’s not like I don’t take care of my dogs! I love my dogs more than I like most people around here!

So do I, I said levelly, looking him in the eye.

I still feel that old urge for vengeance. I want him to realize he was a prick. At the same time that I try to hold compassion for whatever conditions led to him acting so defensive, I still feel angry about him being so snotty, and also for not solving this containment problem a long time ago.

He kept saying that he appreciated our bringing his dog home. But he never asked one question. Where exactly in the canyon did you find him? His rope was tangled up? in the cattails? Oh dear. How did you happen to find him? Oh, it wasn’t you? Who did find him? He didn’t want to know who either of us was. He said, You don’t know me and you don’t know my dogs.

In fact we’ve met several times; it appears you don’t know me, is all. And I do know your dogs. Everybody in the neighborhood knows you can’t let them both loose at the same time. If either one is tied they both stay home. If they’re both loose they run away. Three separate neighbors told me the same thing later, as if I hadn’t heard.

I tried to bring them home to you six or eight years ago, or more, when they’d been wandering that canyon all day and I found them at the mouth of it, panting, dragging. I got the bulldog in the car but the lab ran up the hill and turned down a driveway to nowhere. I sat in that driveway with the bulldog, big red collar with no tag, agonizing over what to do: Do I take the bulldog home with me, go through the rigamarole of radio, shopper, posters, trying to find the owner of the one dog, while the spooky thin dog remains lost in the woods? Or do I turn loose the companionable fat bulldog to go with his buddy, because they’re a team, and they need to be together?

I put him out and sent him after his black lab buddy down that driveway at the top of the canyon. Years later I met their owner, the wife, who thanked me for trying, who explained they can’t let them both loose at the same time, because etc.

No, I did not need to say He would’ve died down there… it just came out. But he would have if he’d had to spend the night out there. I can’t blame the guy for being defensive, though. I can only blame myself, for not dwelling in compassion right in that moment, and just giving the guy the good news that we were bringing his dog home. (But clearly, I argue with myself even now, the rope is not working: These dogs have been getting away for years. Someone who really loves his dogs more than most people would have come up by now with something that works.)

But, as I keep learning over and over, let me look to my own deficiencies, reactions, and conditionings, and not dwell on the behavior of others. I could have taken a different tone, and maybe the adventure would not have ended on a sour note. I’ll leave that behind now, though. The dog is safe, and I’m a little wiser with yet another painful insight about my own tendencies.

Lots of deer browsing in the winter garden, especially after our first real snow days before Christmas.

Snow is half melted by the end of this peculiarly spring-like week, but still covers much of the forest floor. I finally took my husband-camera out for a walk this week, after months on the shelf. Both of us.

Ojo and the dogs came along. I forget somehow, sometimes, who I am and what I love. 

But an hour in the woods with animals and camera, and I begin to remember.

Above, the east facing side of the tree and below, west facing side of the same tree. Things look so different depending upon your perspective.

Orion astraddle the horizon and I’ve not yet had my cocktail, I know it’s deep winter. Yet the breeze this afternoon where I sat on the rim of the canyon, bright sun reflecting on golden cliffs, snow-capped ledges, snow draping slopes and trees, the stream running fast with rapid melt, Ice Canyon sighing, all that and the breeze brushing my cheeks as it flowed down canyon… so poignant. What was that particular quality of air, not quite warm, well shy of cold, but so gentle, an evocative caress? What did it bring to mind that was so specific? It was spring. It was a downstream April breeze, moist, with the faintest remnant chill of winter.

Anything I’ve written in the past few days, whether bucolic praise for my abundant garden, or a rant about epidemic high blood pressure in children, even showing up in toddlers (because everyone is scared shitless at a cellular level), is washed out of my head by this Noah-style flood in Texas.

At the moment my friends in Houston are in a tornado warning while the waters rise in their street. More than two million people are trapped in the fourth-largest city in the country. This storm blew up so fast there really wasn’t any chance for the nearly nine million people in the flash-flood warning region to get out of it. My heart breaks for the suffering to come for the people and the animals in the swath of this historically unprecedented (if you don’t count the Bible) event.

Unfortunately, I can imagine the suffering, so it’s not really unimaginable. Imagine them clinging to the security they’ve known in their homes, then fleeing to neighbors, seeking safety on upper floors, on roofs, wading through waist-high water and getting swept away, losing their grips on their pets or their children, drowning in their water stalled vehicles. There is no end in sight for this before Friday.

Officials decree “Seek higher ground immediately if home floods” and “Do NOT try to shelter in your attic” and “Stay off the roads.” Where do they go? What is the torment of anxiety and fear in their minds?

The National Weather Service just issued this statement: This event is unprecedented and all impacts are unknown and beyond anything experienced. People were thanking God for saving their lives after the first day of the hurricane, a little prematurely perhaps. How many of them will still be alive, and what will they say about God, by the end of this week? This is our worst fears coming to pass, says the Weather Channel.

What does it matter that here, under bluebird skies, the tomatoes grow monstrous on their vines, the hummingbirds fly from dahlia to sunflower to salvia, leopard frogs bask on lily pads in the pond while the lush pink blooms open slowly to the sun? How do we celebrate and enjoy our little lives in the face of catastrophic suffering elsewhere on this churning planet?

Some people are talking as if things will go back to normal in a few days, in a few weeks; but things won’t, and they mustn’t. As this monster storm stalls over coastal Texas, we need to dig deep into our hearts, whoever we are, whomever we thank for our blessings, and wake up to the truth of anthropogenic climate change. Blind prayers and self-righteous dogma will not save Houston, or the rest of Texas, or the planet.

Last Friday Susan responded to my concerned email with, “I wish you were here to help us find the humor in this experience.” I wish there were humor to be found here. I wish I could help her family. I wish I could help everyone in southeast Texas, or anyone. I wish I could help the planet stop climate change.

But without the vast majority of Americans accepting the truly uncomfortable fact of it, making purchasing and business choices according to that fact, standing up to the US government and insisting that our representatives take seriously the threat of it to our present lives and the future of our planet, nothing I can do by living off the grid, recycling, driving a fuel-efficient car (as little as possible), eating locally and ethically, meditating, and being kind, can stanch the flow of “epic catastrophic” natural disasters fueled by the climate change that our species’ greed has wrought since the Industrial Revolution.

Wake up, America. Watch Texas this week, and WAKE UP.

I know I’m preaching to the choir. Anyone who reads my little blog already has reverence for the wild world and sense enough to know that climate change is not a “belief” but a fact. I’m just lamenting. If this were just a regular Sunday and I were complacently enjoying my little life high and dry, here’s what I’d share:

The garden continues to give, especially this generous Brandywine. 

Dawn’s overhead sunflower, more than a foot in diameter.

At last the grasshoppers are starting to die in situ.

Unexpected guests nourish my soul and lend their hands to my collection: Laura seduces the aloof cat, and Gary plays my heartstrings, I mean guitar.