Raven Manifested a Dog
I manifested a birthday.
You won’t believe where I am. I don’t quite believe it myself. It’s nowhere really dramatic, but it’s big news for me. I am on a writing retreat, all by myself, looking out across the glorious salt marshes of the Georgia Coast. Months ago a close and very generous friend offered to let me use her vacation home near Harris Neck. She lives inland and only gets here once or twice a month. Finally I allowed myself this gift.
Low tide, near sunset.
Used to, I would never do a retreat. I believe in setting up one’s daily life so that there’s time and space to practice one’s art and craft, and I have done that well. However, nowadays there’s more business work that is not writing—emails to read, emails to send, posts to make, supplies to order, events to plan. Taxes are staring all of us in the face—my tax papers sit glumly in a box on the kitchen counter, begging me to add up a stack of feed receipts or figure postage expenses.
You know the drill and I hope I’m not tiring you out with this.
And at home I can’t get away from the non-writing work. It follows me around, breathing down my neck. On cold days the dogs come into the kitchen, and every day I have to sweep. Dishes perennially wait to be washed and supper (every other day for me) has to be cooked. This week Raven (my husband) brought home a bag of seed potatoes, and my heart fell when I saw it—potatoes get planted Feb. 14, so it’s time to prepare a bed. Then I saw he’d bought 25 starts of broccoli and 25 of cabbage.
We’re downsizing, to be sure. We have no breeding livestock, except for a few roosters: no bull, no boar, no ram, no stallion, no billy. We reduced our vegetable garden by half this winter. I’ve talked to Raven over and over that I want to travel more, and I’ve begged him not to bring in any more animals. Two months ago we lost Cypress, a sweet old girl Great Pyrenees, a rescue who lived with us for a decade. Her death took us down to two dogs, and one of them is extremely old, decrepit, and pathetic. She won’t last long and that will leave one dog, Asa.
Two weeks ago Raven saw on Facebook that a dog in Tifton, about two hours away, needed a home. The dog was a male Pyrenees. Before I knew anything about it, Raven had sent a message to the person who posted.
He found out that the Pyrenees’s owner had died, and the dog had run away, and had been found, and now needed a home. When Raven told me that he was headed to Tifton, I flipped out. “Do not go get that dog!” I said. “No more dogs. No more anything.” I did not say “please.” I just threatened to take off to Europe without him.
What happened can be counted as strange, weird, unbelievable.
Raven didn’t go to Tifton. But two days later—get this—a large white male Great Pyrenees showed up at our farm. He just came walking in from the road. We have no idea how he got there. He was wearing a collar but with no identification.
We keep checking the “lost dog” sites. We sent an email to our neighbors, who are few and far between, and he doesn’t belong to any of them.
Unfortunately, he’s the sweetest dog in the world, and I’ve fallen in love. If I make a run to town, he literally dances when I come home, throwing his head around and bouncing up and down. It’s the sweetest thing. Plus he barks at deer. I didn’t want any more responsibilities or any more mouths to feed, but what to do when Raven manifests a perfect dog?
I’ve been wanting to finish a book I’ve been working on, and I’ve been unable to focus on it. So I packed a bag, and I left behind the new dog, the broccoli seedlings, the tax papers—all the chaos and mess of farm life. Here I am, deep in a manuscript.
2|2|23
This week was my birthday. I turned 61 wonderful years old. You may remember that I had covid on my 60th birthday, so this year was dynamite. Raven and I took most of the day off and went to Brunswick. He took me out to a Thai restaurant, then we bought a bottle of Richland Rum across the street at the distillery, then walked to the library and got 3 books off the free shelves (Deepok Chopra, Lee Smith, and I forget the other.) My old pal, the poet Steven Croft, was working the front desk. Then we walked in blazing sunshine up and down Newcastle Street, visiting art galleries. We got ice-cream at the cupcake shop—it was the owner’s last day in business because she had decided to close up and retire. I felt a lot of grace in the day.
A Surprising Gift
When I got back home, a small package was waiting. Inside were six small plants in plastic bags from my friend Greg Bruhn, who I first met 20-something years ago at a native plant conference in North Carolina. Three of the baggies contained Georgia savory, a native plant he had started from seed. He included instructions to plant them in full sun.
The other three baggies contained sweetgrass, the same plant that Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. Greg grew these little beings from seed, and the seed, he said, were very difficult to find, and they are growing well in upstate NC, far from the coast. So now I have three sweetgrass in the ground, striking root.
Three tiny Georgia savory and three tiny sweetgrass made it safely to the farm.
Last Thing
On Friday my walking group, the Walkie Talkies (with whom I rarely get to walk anymore), got together for a birthday lunch. The theme was Indian and Kelli hosted. She started things off with a mango lassi.
The mango lassi is sprinkled with cardamom and garnished with mint.
A full-course Indian lunch followed—chai, dal, basmati rice, butter chicken, yogurt, cilantro, nan. I’m dropping in the tablescape, since most of us love these kinds of celebrations.
Stephanie made a Persian Love Cake—pistachios, boiled orange, almond flour, rose icing. A Persian Love Cake! Lord, have mercy.
What I’m Reading
Wild Fruits by Henry David Thoreau. I get the distinct feeling that I would have loved this guy. I’m glad I missed the Civil War, but too bad I didn’t get to meet him.
A Question for You
I’m writing about this, and I’d love an answer: What do you do to make yourself a wilder person? What do you do to rewild? If you’re an older person (as I am), do you find it harder to be/feel wild?
And a Harder Question
You know when you read something and you feel power in the words? The words just fly out and hit you. They are zinging. What do you think causes that? Is the writer simply good with words or is something else at play? Was Mary Oliver just good with words? Was W.S. Merwin just good with words? Is theirs a kind of magic? What’s your thinking about writing and spirit? (This is a serious question. I’d love any thoughts you have.)
Thank you for everything, and have a wonderful week.
Wonderful. I am sure the smell of the plough mud is just as stimulating and inspiring as the smell of an old book!
So odd. Somehow, I was just thinking today that it must be worth feeding that big Pyrenees because she would chase off the deer and protect the livestock from coyotes- I was contemplating my own similar challenges. I didn't know Cypress had passed. I remember meeting her. Glad you have a bouncing big bundle of joy to fill the void. The universe was certainly kind on that score.
Melissa's kid brother shares a birthday with you! Sounds like you had a wonderful time for sure. The Mango lassi reminds me of my adventurous daughter who lives in Walla Walla now. We both love mango and she and I made a batch to enjoy together. The colorful cake and meal looks joyous too.
I had no trouble wilding today when my heart took wing to join nearly 200 sandhill cranes making their way north. Their calls lifted my eyes to the skies, and my spirit followed immediately. They moved in undulating strings, wings flashing in the golden light of late afternoon.
Certainly, Mary Oliver and W.S. Merwin kept their own wild hearts for nearly a century each. Three years gone for each too, I believe, yet their words burn continue to burn bright in the worlds they made and left for us.
I thought I had no answer for that harder question, but perhaps it is when we resonate on multiple levels with someone who we read, we almost experience a Deja Vu of vicarious experience that nearly could have been our own and we enter deeply into the thing they are expressing.
I am so flattered that you posted about receiving my gifts. I had intended to mail them out last Monday, but made to the PO the following day and they arrived In Reidsville GA a day earlier than I expected. The line at the local PO was long and 1 clerk was handling all the customers,. with the possibility of a truck arriving and the counter having to shut down. This is in the suburbs of Raleigh in a county of 1 million + residents..
I will comment later about writing because I don't want anything to interfere with my own creative process. I have promised my monthly, Monday poetry that I will write about a subject that has intrigued me since learning of it. During WWII Ukraine was invaded by Germany and the Jewish population suffered greatly. A few of the survivors of that persecution are are still living and some of them were recently offered sanctuary in Germany after Russia invaded Ukraine. Since my great-grandparents immigrated from that country I have a sense of connection to that part of the world.