Bone – Sasha of The Chukchi Sea

Growling Clouds And Hummingbirds

August 30, 2022 Pazlo1 Comment

Hello friends!

I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last correspondence. Our days are still a bit discombobulated due to two tumultuous years here for my people and our Wonder Garden. First mom was gone, then my person’s puppy moved in with us. (And on some days, my person’s puppy’s puppies would come over, too, and stay overnight sometimes, like the night they slept in the tent in the yard.)

Earlier this year, the best thing happened! My person stopped leaving for whole, long days to go to that “worky” thing he spent so much time at. I don’t know why he didn’t think of this sooner. I’m here, Doone The Cat is here, and our food is here, so why would you need to go anywhere else? Well, except sometimes when he goes to “The Trading Post”, ’cause he brings home snacks and other grub, but that usually doesn’t take very long. He’s usually home before I even think about worrying he won’t come back.

Now he’s here almost all the time and I can spend the entire day outside in the fresh air, on the cool grass, napping or keeping watch. We take nice long hikes at all times of the day. Today it was just after sunrise, so we could enjoy the cool morning before the late summer heat drives us to our water dishes and the shade of the big trees. He watches every sunset with me, and afterward we go to the south lawn, and he sits on the steps listening to The Lone Ranger radio shows until it’s too dark to see when we come into the house. Occasionally he’ll go somewhere and say “Be a good puppy while I’m gone. I’ll be back after a while.”, but not too often, and never for too long.

Then another thing happened this summer! His puppy found his own doghouse, as is the wont of adult dogs, and now it’s just the three of us! Wow! Let the spoiling begin! The cat looks like she’s gained ten ounces, and I myself must exercise restraint to keep from over-indulging in the plenty laid before us. It also seems more quiet now that it’s just us. My person doesn’t turn on the TV very much. On Big Saturday he makes it a point to see two things he calls Stooges and Svengoolie, but the rest of the time it’s quiet. Well, except when he plays those awful drums. Or the shiny guitar. Or the plastic piano.

So the past couple of weeks I’ve seen and heard some flocks of geese flying around over Maggie’s pond next door. Probably some up by that pond where we go biking, too. The sunsets each day are a little further south, and the nights are getting cool. All these things tell me our trial is drawing to a close soon, and all of this terrible summer business will be behind us. This hasn’t been the most challenging summer. I’ve seen hotter. But I’ll tell you what was off the charts this year, and that was angry clouds!

Holy smokes! Some days they’d all get amassed together, shutting off the sun. They’d bring some of the biggest bruisers you ever saw, too, and mean-looking. I don’t know if it’s mating season and they’re fighting to show off, or if it’s a territorial thing or maybe they get crazy from the heat like people do sometimes. First they flash their big flashlights like a warning so you know it’s coming and boy do you know it’s coming, and the wind picks up and then “BANG- Grrrrrrrrrrrr! Hgrrrrrrr!” they have the longest bark-growl thing of any bark-growl thing I’ve ever heard and loud? You want to get under the end table for this ’cause it shakes our old house and the windowpanes rattle and you can feel the grumbling in the ground, that’s how loud it is. Loud? You haven’t heard loud ’til you hear this! Even that awful drum could never dream of being this loud. It’s like a nillilion drums or something that means a lot of them, you know? Well, luckily there have been only a few really big battles this summer, and now that things are cooling down perhaps the clouds will be in better humors.

I’m glad we’re heading into fall. Mostly ’cause it leads to winter, and but also ’cause I like fall, too. The leaves start to come off the trees in fall, remember? They smell great, but they make stalking game in the Wonder Woods impossible with all their racket. My person purposely kicks at them and cries “Wee!”, and so that doesn’t help either. But a great thing about leaf-off is that we can see a lot farther in a lot of directions because we don’t have all those trees blocking our view from the top of Nishan Hill or even on the trails. Unless we’re in the pine stands ’cause the leaves don’t fall off the pine trees. Well, they do, but in a different way. It’s like pine trees are a lot different from the…the other kind that has their leaves fall off. It’s like they decide to take their leaves off for the winter, or like shedding I guess.

I must confess there are a few things about summer that I enjoy. I like that my person isn’t always in a rush to get the doors closed when I go in and out. I like that all the windows of the house are open, so I can smell what’s going on around me when I’m stuck inside. I like that I’m not stuck inside much! Sometimes in winter, even I like to get warmed up. And sometimes my person makes me come in and says “It’s not a fit night out for man or beast!”

This year I’ve taken a fancy to the hummingbirds. The first time I heard one, I thought it was a giant bee, but once you’ve heard one you recognize it right away after that. We have Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds here, and they come to the feeder at the kitchen window constantly. There must be a whole litter that lives nearby, and by now we see two or three at a time. They’re pretty, they hover cool, they have an aesthetically pleasing long snout, like canines. And they are feisty! These little guys are not cowards, but ruffians. They’ll buzz each other on the feeder and chase each other around like fighter planes! One little guy is the most courageous and defensive, with attitude, and won’t give up his perch at the feeder for anyone! They can buzz him and he sticks his snout out like a sword and says “Bring it on! You want a piece of this? Hah?” or at least he looks like he’s saying that. With a Brooklyn accent. Yeah, I’ll miss them. But I know they’ll be back next year.

Right now I’m getting ready to enjoy the fall. Winter can’t come soon enough for me. But like the freedom, fresh air and hummingbirds of summer, there are a few things I like about fall, too. Who could pass up a nap in a leafpile?

Wag more, bark less.

Sasha

Caravan Draft Chapter Five

June 5, 2020 PazloLeave a comment

Chapter Five
Good Things

“And how many good things do you have?” Mother asked Sasha warmly, engaged in the rapt, attentive bathing of her sibling.
Brothers Anchu and Splotch had taken the bone she considered hers, despite her protests, and she now sought Mother’s intervention. Breathless from her frantic flight from the scene of the purloining, she repeated her testimony in anxious and clunky sentences, punctuated by frequent looks at the accused and the rapidly disappearing item in question.
“So I understand.” Mother answered, and repeated, “And how many good things do you have?”
“I don’t know. But my bone!”
Mother addressed her as a teacher would a student, a question to provoke thinking and a reasoned answer, “Don’t you have another bone somewhere?”
“But that was mine and they took it!” Sasha answered without looking to Mother, her eyes fixed on Splotch as he crunched down the last bit of evidence. He and Anchu trotted off between the dogs’ houses, looking for further opportunities this sunny late winter day.
Now, after six moons, Sasha and her litter mates were nearing full size. Alas, they were still very young, still learning to navigate in the context of a social world; elders, leaders, siblings, people, the cat. They had yet to witness babies, puppies, living beings newer than themselves. They had yet to encounter the Great Wide World, with rules of conduct and safety piled atop the rules of civility, and its own complex and fluid laws of territorial and property rights.
Sasha flopped to the ground, hopes extinguished, and heaved a huffy sigh.
“So,” Mother continued, “you say it belonged to you, and you are vexed that you don’t have it.” she restated the facts.
“And Splotch and Anch’ took it and that’s not fair!”
“Okay. So lastly we add injustice to your grievance. Or is it vengeance you desire?”
“No, no!” Sasha sat squarely and looked directly into Mother’s eyes. Despite the current squabble, Sasha’s heart was true, as were her siblings’. “They’re my brothers. I wouldn’t wish anything bad on them.”
Mother’s lips curled into the slightest smile at this, and she went on with her lesson. “So you think there was something the universe made just for you. Specifically and personally, like your teeth or your tail.”
Sasha felt she was in no mood for conversation. Certainly no mood for lessons. Her focus was on the fact that the bone was already gone. She felt a sense of loss. A sense there was something she could have had, and now can never regain. She answered Mother’s question without any thought about its meaning, or what the intent of the lesson might be. She drolled in a conciliatory tone of reluctant and indignant surrender. “I know the universe didn’t make the bone just for me.”
“Only your heart belongs to you, precious one,” Mother cooed, as she looked to her daughter with a warm, knowing smile, “and even that can be stolen from you.”
“What?!” Sasha leaped to her feet, wide-eyed, stricken with fear, “I’ll die!”
“No, no.” Mother calmed her, “That’s just a saying. It means we don’t really control who it is we love. Love happens on its own. It’s not something you can make up and decide for yourself.”
“How does that help me with the bone theft?”
“We don’t really own anything outside of our own bodies. Everything else is part of the world.”
“Then why is it called ‘mine’? What about my rag ball? It’s not mine?” Sasha whined, feeling like she was losing more things. Feeling like she was being compelled to let her siblings help themselves to things she’d become accustomed to, attached to. She whimpered, on the verge of tears.
“Now, now. We’ll call your ball ‘yours’, and you can keep it for yourself. Just because things are part of the world doesn’t mean they can’t be a part of our lives, and sources of joy or solace. But things pass into and out of our lives as easily as the wind.”
“My bone sure did.” Sasha replied. She watched Splotch and Anchu approach Kotka’s dish. He lunged toward them and blasted them with a deafening, growling bark. Both the youngsters yelped and spun, Anchu knocking down Splotch and running right over him in his haste to escape the huge Husky. Kotka turned to hide his face and chuckled. He caught Sasha’s eye and winked at her.

Sasha giggled out loud, the sound decidedly foreign in the roaring, freezing, endless Arctic night. The dogs in the pile closest to her did not respond, did not want to risk any movement that might allow in the frigid air. There totaled about thirty dogs huddled behind Tun’s windbreak, some inside the tiny hide shelter, the rest mounded on and around it.
She was just inside the tent, beside Rol. From where she lay, a tiny gap opened onto the world outside. As small as her own eye, it revealed glimpses of horizontally-passing snowflakes and ice shards. An ear or a tail would shift into or out of view as the dogs continually sought respite from the storm in the heaping pile of fur balls.
“And how many good things do you have?” Mother’s voice repeated the question, like an echo that had taken so long to course its way up the canyon and back. Remembering this lesson was where this started. Frozen and scared and in pain, in the depth of the black gale, Sasha had begun to enumerate her woes. Her desperate thirst, her persistent hunger, the pain in her paws, the fierce cold, the biting wind.

“Okay.” Mother summed up the lesson as she released the sibling from bath duty, and moved on directly to Sasha. She started with the ears and face. “You can look around you any time and count the good things you have. Family and friends. A good home. Your heart and mind. Your body. Even your breath and your life.” She finished with the ears and paused to look her daughter in the eye. “Or you’re free to go on worrying about something that doesn’t exist anymore and didn’t belong to you in the first place.”
Still moping, a short while later Sasha made her way to Kotka’s doghouse. She related the whole tale, from the felonious misdeeds of her brothers to Mother’s lesson.
“I don’t understand. How can I count good things when they are being taken from me?” she posited.
“I don’t really know much about this.” Kotka said rather solemnly. “I don’t even remember having a mother, or brothers, and I never really had anything. Excepting my breath and life as your mother said.” His eyes wandered across the homestead slowly, and his head cocked a little. “Well, until I got here. I’ve come to have family, and friends. Comforts and caring. I have caring. And peace. Now that I think of it…”
“If everything is part of the world and nothing belongs to me,” Sasha rambled, interrupting her friend, “I guess I’ll never have anything either.”
“Oh, I didn’t say I have nothing.”
“That’s what you just said!”
“No. I said I’d never had anything besides my breath and life.”
“But everybody has those things. It’s a given.”
“Not so fast, young lady.” Kotka shifted his weight off his bad leg, “What about Iluk?” he asked, referring to the dog that had died just weeks ago, from unknown and presumably natural causes.
“But he’s dead!”
“Exactly.” He sat, staring at Sasha.
“Okay, so I have my breath and life. There. Two things everyone else…I mean…every living being has. How does that help me?”
“Well, you wouldn’t be able to talk about it if you weren’t alive. There’s that.”
“Great. So I have being alive and agony.” she fumed.
“So how many were there?” Kotka asked.
“What?”
“How many good things did you count?” he queried, turning to chase a bird from his dish.
“I don’t know.” Sasha pouted, “I didn’t count.”
“Well, isn’t that silly? You say you have only three things but haven’t counted?”
“What’s to count?” Frustrated and annoyed, she threw herself down. “All I have is a ball.”
“How about family?” Kotka countered, “You have siblings.”
“Oh yeah, and brothers who steal from me.”
Kotka was looking around the homestead again, enumerating all he saw from his perspective. “You have Bek and Nina. And Jiak.”
“Well, yeah, Jiak.” Sasha conceded briefly, “But I don’t own Jiak!”
He leaned closer and insisted. “But you have Jiak in your life.”
“Yes. That’s a good thing I guess.”
“And your bed. And supper. You never are cold or hungry.” The mentor continued, remembering times when this was not always so for him. He took notice of one precious thing after another that had been missing from his life before Bek brought him home that fateful day. It was easy to see the bounty from his perspective.
“Yes, that’s true too. I am grateful.”
“There, you have gratitude. And friends. How about me? Am I really nothing to you?”
“Oh, no! No!” Sasha ran to him and pressed her snout against his, “I treasure you most.”
“And you have your mother.” Kotka sounded a little sad as he said this. Taken from his own mother earlier than he should have been, watching Mother tend to her brood was the most magnificent and valued reward he had come to know at the homestead.
A tear welled in Sasha’s eye as she sat looking toward the yard.
“So you still feel you have nothing?” Kotka offered.
She was frozen still, her gaze fixed.
“I’m counting.” she replied.

Here in this shivering camp Sasha wondered where Splotch was now. And her other litter mates, Anchu being the only one still with her. She thought of her dear friend Kotka, whom she hadn’t seen since she’d joined the sled team on the mountain ascent. She poked her head up and out of the pile between one dog’s head and another’s butt, and called his name. She discovered immediately the futility of trying to out-roar the storm.
Then she realized that the objects in the tiny gap were becoming brighter. Day was dawning. At first light she would gather up her brother, and they would seek out Kotka. And Stone and Dak, Umka and Alexei and Larik.
She added these now to an account, an inventory of all the good things she was grateful to have.
An account which began, first and foremost, with her breath and life.

Snud

April 24, 2020 Pazlo2 Comments

What do you get when snow melts? Snud! Mud made from snow. It’s really amazing how some snow turns into mud. Mostly snow is frozen water, and usually when it melts that’s what you get. Maybe it’s a special kind of snow, or maybe just a special time of year, but the snud season is upon us.

Along with snud season comes the opening of the yard around the back door, where I hang out. The fences come down and last year’s leaves get raked out of the way, and I can get my nose to the foundation. There’s always something trying to get into the cellar. I’ve been down there myself, and I can tell you it’s nice and cool and a little wet. Not snud, ’cause there’s never snow in the house. Must be plain old mud from when the water runs down behind the stone steps.

Pine squirrels are the the most pesky, and the most organized. I think it’s like a little platoon or something, because there’s never just one. If you sit at one corner waiting for the one to come out, the other one runs in through the gap behind the lattice. If you go over there to chase that one, the first one comes out from the corner. I decided to simply lay down in the middle, and when I did they both ran in at the same time! I’m not giving up, though.

It’s been crazy warm some of these days, though still snowing off and on this week, Sunday was like summer, and my person had to peel off a couple of layers on the walk. I smelled something across Widowmaker Field. Something revealed after the last late snow melted. It required some effort to drag my person over the hill. And then, I was vindicated!

The story in pictures:

April 18th Down The Lane

Late Snow

Wild Turkeys

Eagles Raid The Barnyard

Birdwatcher

Mushing Through the Bog

Swampy Spring Walk

Mmm! That Air!

Turkeys In The Field

Dawn Hawks

I smelled something

Had to drag my person

It’s here somewhere…

Yes! See, I told you!

A whale skeleton maybe!

Now to drag this home

At night it’s still cold, but it won’t last long, I know. I can tell by the molt happening to my coat. The winter hairs are starting to fall out in little clumps. This usually raises mom’s ire, and she crabs that the vacuum cleaner is overwhelmed. I don’t like the vacuum cleaner anyway because it’s so loud (and I’m afraid of loud noises), so maybe they’ll get rid of it so mom won’t need to crab about it. I’d be pleased with that.

Clear trails!

Sasha

Snow And Gunpowder

January 21, 2020 Pazlo2 Comments

Woo! Hoo! More snow!

We had a good snowstorm blanket the ranch with fresh powder up to a Chusky’s knees, and we went for a great hike on Sunday. Uncle Matt cousin Max and some other people friends came over to do some rabbit hunting. I was ready to see them cry when they saw how I could run much faster than them, and I still have trouble catching a rabbit.

Well, I guess the rabbits found out about it, because nobody saw a single one! They must have been hiding in their dens.

We went for a long walk and rooted around through some grapevine tangles, and never scared up a bunny. As we were heading through Chuy’s trail eastward, a war broke out. It was a small war, I guess, and they took their time shooting. Still, I’m afraid of loud noises and the gunfire was between us and the house!

My person ducked into Mr. Nishan’s machine shed, and we waited it out. The wind blew all around and snow continued to fall as we waited. It was really cold, so we were glad to be out of the wind.

At one point, my person pointed to the window and said “Okay, I’m going to knock out that window. You go to Dawson and get Sergeant Preston. Understand? Get Sergeant Preston!” I think he thought he was in the TV show for a minute.

Finally, the shooting stopped, and we came down through the Avenue Of The Pines to discover it was our own people that came for rabbit hunting. Geez, I should have thought of that. They never intended to run after the rabbits!

Rooting Out

Winterberries

My Bone!

Two-pawed Tenacity

Do deer eat bones?

Was that gunfire?

Winter Sunset

I was really tired by the time we came in, and I had a good long nap in front of the wood stove. I pretended I was huddled around a fire with my teammates on the frozen Chukchi Peninsula in Siberia.

When I woke up, I was glad I was home and warm.

Clear trails!

Sasha

Snow Shoe Heaven

December 27, 2019 Pazlo1 Comment

I’m so glad we had plenty of snowfall, and my person finally got out his snow shoes!

We had a great hike last weekend, around all the trails out back. Snow smells great, and it’s really easy to track things like bunnies and mice. Their scent sticks to the snow, and it’s easier than trying to pick it out of grass. We move slower when my person has snow shoes on. It’s kinda nice to go slower sometimes, though I never think of it. Usually I want to cover as much ground as I can, check out all the trails before it starts to get dark. But when I’m forced to slow down, I notice a lot of things I usually just run past.

I noticed a huge wasp nest in the cherry tree, and I was scared at first and wanted to run. I didn’t see any wasps, and in some places the paper-like stuff of wasp nests had begun to tear. I guess they must have moved out or something, or maybe there’s a lot of frozen wasps in there! I better remember that when spring comes around.

On the trail, my person, slow enough as it is, insisted on stopping and taking photographs. At one point, I could smell the bunnies in the thicket right ahead of me, and I forgot that he said the “Hold up!” command. I took off after the bunny scent and pulled him over on his backside! I didn’t mean to, but afterward I thought it was kinda funny.

Snow!

Boy It’s Deep!

North Loop Trail

In The Wonder Woods

Sprint!

Look!

Wood’s Edge

Snowing On Thursday Trail

What’s That I Smell?

Slow Going

Nishan Hill

Where’s That Rabbit?

Great news! I was out in the driveway and smelled something familiar. I dug and dug and guess what I found? It was the bone I thought the snow plow had eaten! It was buried in the snow. I dug down to it, but it was frozen to the ground. Fortunately, my person understood my quandary, and kicked the bone loose! Now I’m ahead of the game, since they put another bone in that sock for Christmas! Don’t tell them, but the “beef tip” snacks were terrible. Maybe Doone The Cat will eat them.

Clear Trails!

Sasha

A Tree In The House?

December 10, 2019 Pazlo7 Comments

Wow! We had a good blizzard drop about a foot-and-a-half of snow on us. It sure looks pretty, but has impeded my person from snow shoeing or ski-joring. Hopes are high for this weekend!

I don’t know what gets into people at this time of year. Maybe it’s to celebrate the return of the snow, or maybe snow makes them crazy. All kinds of decorations come out, and every room is smothered. My person tacked up colored light bulbs on the front porch, and put out his cardboard painted snowman. Then, they brought this little pine tree into the parlor. I remember they did this last year, too. I mean, there are thousands of pine trees around the house, so it seems a little odd. Next thing, they’ll try to hide it. They’ll put colored light bulbs on it and then a bunch of shiny things like birds put in their nests. They’re not fooling me. I know they have a tree in there.

I see the sock hanging up, the one with black paw prints on it. I didn’t walk on it, so I don’t know how that happened. Probably Doone The Cat. The important thing is that not long after they hide the tree in the parlor, they load up that sock with some of my favorite treats!

So I went out to chew on the ham bone Mom gave me, and when I got to the driveway, I discovered the snow plow had eaten it. I never knew a truck would eat my treats, but you can bet I won’t be leaving any lying around again.