This multiple-part series is from a longer work-in-progress I’ve begun that recounts my experiences in Recapture Canyon in southeast Utah. Woven throughout the longer narrative are my ideas about language’s part in evolution, culture, and relationship–including what language reveals about and how it affects the ways we treat with people who live with what I call “brain variables”–conditions of the brain that require those of us with “normal” brains to make an extra efforts to travel beyond ourselves in order to encounter and stand with the people that live with them. As with some of my longer series, this may not be an easy read. It certainly hasn’t been an easy write. I respectfully request that readers not download this piece. If you are in need of any language or information in this series, please email me at pk dot wizadmin at gmail dot com to request a copy.
On Thanksgiving Eve, Sky, our family dog, died of conditions related to old age. If she’d reached her birthday at December’s end, she’d have turned fourteen years old. Up to four or five weeks before her death, Sky still raced my fourteen-year-old daughter around the yard, loping creakily on arthritic hips. Running must have hurt but when she threw herself into the competition her blue eyes sparked and her mouth curled back along her muzzle into a wide, tongue-lolling grin. During those runs she felt herself part of a pack and like a good Siberian husky jockeyed to take lead position. She’d become deaf over the last year; to draw her attention we shouted her name and clapped our hands. She turned and looked but seemed unsure that she’d really heard anything. I suspect that in the last few weeks she’d started going blind. Continue reading “Death of an old dog, part one, by Patricia”
Wilderness Interface Zone 