Riding Shotgun

Yesterday I was crossing Prune Alley, waiting for a break in the tourist traffic. A small, beat-up Datsun pick-up passed me – the very make and model of the truck I used to drive – and I saw a man driving with his dog riding shotgun. Remembering Harley, my Dog-of-Ten-Lifetimes, who used to ride shotgun with me in my beater, I felt a pang of sweet memory laced with grief pass through my very core.

Then, looking at the BMW that I was chirping to unlock, a question darted through my soul: What has happened to my life anyway? How did I end up here?

I didn’t realize it at the time but in the era of The Beater Truck, I was living The Big Dream – my humble version of The Big Dream anyway: working outdoors doing trail work for the government and being able to bring my dog to work with me every day. I considered this to be a posh luxury – a perk of the job – knowing that my faithful friend wasn’t at home languishing on the front porch, awaiting my arrival home late into each evening.

In retrospect, it was an uncomplicated life – that of a young woman who loves her dog and working outdoors. Preferring canine company to that of humans, you can call me the Crazy Dog Lady, but it didn’t feel eccentric at the time. I was just living my life and doing my best with the resources I had in the remote location that I had chosen to live in. People weren’t in abundance in that tiny community, my immediate neighbors lived acres away from my cabin, and, overall, the quiet life suited me just fine.

Isn’t it funny how life looks so intentionally designed when you look back and you can see how all the pieces fitted together just so? The best part about this time was that I was living my preference of lifestyle seemingly by accident . . . by default . . . almost as if my options and resources were so limited at the time, I could only choose the one singular right way.

Do you want A or A? I’ll pick A.

I was broke, living in an old, one-room cabin with cheap rent ($35 a month), and relying on a truck that I had to park on a steep incline of the county road so I could clutch start it every morning.

Looking back, it was pretty gnarly living. Still, my dilapidated 14’ x 18’ cabin with the leaky roof was cheap rent, and I couldn’t complain. I actually did have to scatter pots to catch the dripping leaks when it rained, just like in those old-timey movies about Ma and Pa Kettle.

There was a wood cookstove for cooking, a weird pot-belly stove for heat that was impossible to load no matter what size wood I split, one table and one chair, and a tiny sleeping loft in the upper gable of the roof that was accessible by a scary, rickety ladder that was tacked to the end of the loft. I hated going to bed each night knowing that I would have to screw my courage to the sticking place the next morning before I swung my legs over the edge to catch the first rung of the ladder.

Harley went everywhere with me, so it was a common sight to see the two of us tooling around the county with the windows rolled down while singing along with Bill Monroe to some bluegrass tune on a cassette tape. Harley had a better singing voice than I did, but she was no critic. We were the quintessential happy couple.

The day I saw the man and his happy pup in that dented-up truck, a dart of awareness passed through me. I realized that my most essential criteria for living a happy life – “bring my dog with me to work,” no matter the job – had somehow slipped through the cracks of my shifting paradigms. At one time in my life, I would not even consider a job opportunity unless my dog could accompany me throughout the workday. If I couldn't bring Harley, I knew that the job was doing the wrong thing in the wrong location, so it wasn't the right one for me. I guess you could say that staying true to my Doggo Wheelhouse presented its limitations but maintained my priorities.

I eventually found the perfect job as a fire lookout in a wilderness area. It was a great situation where my boss did not care in the least if my dog tagged along. In fact, he welcomed Harley on board to serve as the best and cheapest bear alarm system the government could ever hire for such a remote location.

This rare and beautiful opportunity, located in the midst of 572,000 acres of wilderness, had all the potential of becoming exquisitely lonely, but I never thought of it that way. I was living amid incredible grandeur, and Harley was right there by my side. She was my true-blue, thick-and-thin companion in the middle of all that vast quiet.

So many times in life we just don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone, but my time there, being embraced by all of that pristine and quiet beauty, was a rare opportunity that I recognized at the time. Looking back, I am so thankful that I followed The Big Dream Job and took the chance on being guided by what I knew and believed to be important.

Life and its wilderness opportunities moved Harley and me around to different locations, serving in different capacities of fire lookout to trail crew to wilderness rover to fishing camp to just being a wilderness bum.

Time passed and we hiked and built fires and cooked outdoors and listened to owls once we were both tucked in for the night. Harley and I slept in tents, lean-to shelters, and out under the stars. It was a grand gypsy adventure that was born from my commitment to having Harley by my side.

Our conjoined manifesto grew to be “And never the twain shall part.” I didn’t know it at the time, but Harley had become my North Star, my Polaris. I read once that the reason the North Star is so vital to us Earthlings is that it is a universal constant at which the axis of Earth points. Because it is a constant, the North Star neither rises nor sets. It is dependable. You can always count on it to be there. Like Harley.

My beloved Harley crossed over the Rainbow Bridge, and something inside of me died along with her. I felt empty inside. It was more than devastation. A part of me was just gone. I still feel a loneliness that her absence created. Anyone who has had a Dog of Ten Lifetimes knows this feeling.

Needing to take a break from the environment that we had wandered together for the past 13 years, I said farewell to my work and home in the wilderness and decided to never look back. A new job opportunity came up that allowed me to pay my bills and afford a less rustic cabin with more amenities built on a mountainside overlooking the Puget Sound. I found myself saying that I just couldn't pass it up, that the cabin would provide some roots for me.

The only problem? I couldn't bring my new dog, Wyeth, to work with me. My work schedule overall was decent, and we two were still able to get out and roam the trails on our 3-day weekends . . . but there was a shift. I couldn’t hear it, but I felt it. And the shift was bigger than me agreeing to not bring my dog to work. In retrospect, it was me compromising and beginning the rewrite on My Dog Manifesto.

Because I was gone throughout the day, I decided to adopt a new companion for Wyeth so she wouldn’t feel lonely. A husky pup from the shelter named Loki came to join us, as did another shelter pup named Laddie a few months later. We were a solid pack, the four of us, until a friend told me about Mac, a “Lassie” collie who was in desperate need of a retirement home.

So there we were: Wyeth, Loki, Laddie, Mac, and me. It sounds a little crazy but it wasn’t a big deal to have four dogs. We were like a self-supporting microcosm that took care of itself. I guess this would be the truest definition of a tight pack: “All for one and one for all.” It felt good. My life on the surface must have looked to be that of a lonely loner, but it wasn’t. It was just me living and breathing and being and hiking and loving my dogs with all of the love that I had once given to Harley. I called us The Harley Pack.

When I left the house each morning, the dogs seemed to be happy. They didn’t express any separation anxiety like Harley used to on those workdays when I had to attend some admin training session and I had to leave her at home looking bereft. This made me feel like I was doing the right thing by leaving them all at home during my workday. Their biggest concern was when the nice woman would return home to feed them their meals.

Dependent on their respective ages and energy levels, When I looked in the rearview mirror as I jounced down the ungraded dirt road, they would be sleeping in sunny spots on the porch, sniffing in the woods, chewing contentedly on sticks, or chasing each other in circles. They even had a dog door through which they could exit the heat of the afternoon, enter the cool house, and snooze the afternoon away on my ratty sofa.

My Dog of Ten Lifetimes

I still miss Harley. She was my best friend, co-worker, colleague, confidante. Looking back, I can see

• I must be able to bring my dog to work

served as a primary bullet point on my Higher Self's mission statement.

The years have passed. That job led to another dog-restricted job. Then I returned to school, and we all know how major universities feel about a pack of four dogs sitting outside classrooms waiting for their human. Not a good option. The mornings were full of classroom time, the afternoons were taken up by various half-ass jobs that supported me through school, and the evenings had me up late writing papers, conjugating French verbs, and studying for finals.

Outdoor-dog time grew to be more limited for me and free-range hikes on the weekends turned into long evening strolls. Yes, I had moved from my rustic cabin in the woods into an old house in the university district. I had running water, electricity, a refrigerator, and even a vacuum. Cleaning up all the dog hair had become a Jetson-era dream.

Life had changed, as had I. Again, in hindsight, it didn't occur to me that I was focused on Ahead instead of looking at Right Now.

With me feeling so buried by decisions to complete my education, sink into debt with student loans, and pursue future employment, these changes were all taking on priority status without me realizing that I was granting permission, one way or another, to something that was counter-intuitive to my internal doggo mission statement.

I don't rightly know how it all happened. I don't know when a yes became a no and a no became a yes. But life changed when I consciously reversed the two and said “It” (the all-encompassing “It”) was all for a Better Future with roots, health benefits, and a 401K. I thought I was doing the grown-up thing, but I was only eroding the essential relationship with my Higher Self.

That's the problem with giving in and giving up . . . you don't realize that it has happened until it feels like it's too late to do anything about it anymore . . . which is why you continue to give in and give up. Accept and wonder why. Feel not quite right but don’t quite know why.

But that's just it: awareness has a way of knocking us upside the head. We can learn that it's not too late. Not at all. We can adjust the sails, take a different fork in the trail. Life is dynamic. It’s not cemented in place by compromises. It can sprout and grow in new directions. All sorts of good decisions are always before me. All I must do is choose and remember what’s on my personal manifesto.

Today, I honor the preferences that have led to Now. Life is a circle when it comes to choosing what is important and what I love. Today, my dog Arrow is asleep at my side while I type away on the keyboard. She is a good dog that reminds me so much of my beloved Harley – patient and gentle and easy. Always alert and always aware. She doesn’t sing along with me when we drive around, but she does love to ride shotgun in the truck.

Life is a lively event filled with so many baby steps that have led to where I am today. Although I may have put my Manifesto in neutral, I have done a little editing and a whole lot of moving to switch things up. I remind myself to invite my Dream to ride shotgun with me and my dog again, roll down the windows, and belt out a tune.

We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle; easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we should still live no other way.

Irving Townsend, author of Separate Lifetimes