He came out of the night, appearing suddenly in my headlights, a huge, golden dog, panting, his front paws tapping the ground in an nervous small dance. Behind him, tall cottonwoods in their April bloom. Behind the grove, the San Juan River, moving promptly, dark and swollen with spring melt.
It was nearly midnight, and we were looking for a place to throw down our sleeping bags before starting our river trip in the morning. Next to me in the cab of the raise up sat Benj Sinclair, at his feet a midden of road-food wrappers smeared with the fragrance of corn dogs, onion rings, and burritos. Round-cheeked, Buddha-bellied, thirty-nine years ancient, Benj had spent his early years in the Peace Corps, in West Africa, and had developed a stomach that could digest anything. Behind him in the jump seat was Kim Reynolds, an Outward Leap instructor from Colorado known for her grace in a kayak and her long braid of brunette hair, which held the faint odor of a healthy, thirty-two-year-ancient woman who had sweated in the desert and hadn’t used deodorant. Like Benj and me, she had eaten a dinner of pizza in Moab, Utah, a hundred miles up the road where we’d met her. Like us, she gave off the scents of garlic, onions, tomato sauce, basil, oregano, and anchovies.
In the car that pulled up next to us were Pam Weiss and Bennett Austin. They had driven from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Moab in their own car, helped us rig the raft and shop for supplies, joined us for pizza, and, like us, wore neither fragrance nor cologne. Pam was thirty-six, an Olympic ski racer, and Bennett, twenty-five, was trying to keep up with her. They had recently fallen in like and exuded a mixture of endorphins and pheromones.
Public very nearly never describe other public in these terms — noting first their smells — for we’re primarily visual creatures and rely on our eyes for information. By contrast, the only really vital sense-key for the huge, golden dog, doing his small dance in the headlights, was our olfactory signatures, wafting to him as we opened the doors.
It was for this reason — smell — that I reckon he trotted directly to my door, leaned his head forward cautiously, and sniffed at my bare thigh. What mix of aromas went up his long snout at that very first second of our meeting? What atavistic memories, what possibilities were triggered in his canine worldview as he untangled the mysteries of my sweat?
The huge dog — now appearing reddish in the interior set alight of the truck and without a collar — took another reflective breath and studied me with excited consideration. Force it have been what I ate, and the devious residue it left in my pores, that made him so interested in me? It was the only thing I could see (note my human use of “see” even while describing an olfactory phenomenon) that differentiated me from my friends. Like them, I skied, biked, and climbed, and was single. I had just turned forty-one, a compact man with chestnut hair and bright auburn eyes. But when I ate meat, it was that of wild animals, not domestic ones — mostly elk and antelope along with the rare grouse, duck, goose, and trout mixed in.
Was it their metabolized essence that intrigued him — some whiff of what our Paleolithic ancestors had shared? Smell is our oldest sense. It was the olfactory tissue at the top of our primeval nerve cords that evolved into our cerebral hemispheres, where thought is lodged. Perhaps the dog — a life who lived by his nose — knew a lot more about our connection than I could possibly presume.
His deep auburn eyes looked at me with luminous appreciation and said, “You need a dog, and I’m it.”
Unsettled by his mysterious read of me — I had been looking for a dog for over a year — I gave him a cordial pat and answered, “Excellent dog.”
His tail beat steadily, and he didn’t go, his eyes subdue saying, “You need a dog.”
As we got out of the cars and started to unpack our gear, I lost track of him. There was his head, now a tail, there a rufous side moving among bare legs and sandals.
I threw my pad and bag down on the sand under a cottonwood, slipped into its silky warmth, turned over, and found him digging a nest by my side. Industriously, he scooped out the sand with his front paws, casting it between his hind legs before rotary, rotary, rotary, and settling to face me. In the starlight, I could see one brow go up, the other down.
Of course, “brows” isn’t really the right term, since dogs sweat only through their paws and have no need of brows to keep perspiration out of their eyes, as we do. Yet, certain breeds of dogs have darker hair over their eyes, what force be called “brow markings,” and he had them.
The Hidatsa, a Native American tribe of the northern Fantastic Plains, believe that these sorts of dogs, whom they call “Four-Eyes,” are especially gentle and have magical powers. Stanley Coren, the wise canine psychologist from the University of British Columbia, has also noted that these “four-eyed” dogs obtained their reputation for psychic powers “because their expressions were simpler to read than those of other dogs. The contrasting-colored spots make the movements of the muscles over the eye much more visible.”
In the starlight, the dog lying next to me raised one brow while lowering the other, implying curiosity mixed with concern over whether I’d let him stay.
“Night,” I said, giving him a pat. Then I closed my eyes.
When I opened them in the morning, he was subdue curled in his nest, looking directly at me.
“Hey,” I said.
Up went one brow, down went the other.
“I am yours,” his eyes said.
I let out a breath, unprepared for how his sweet, faintly hound-dog face — going from happiness to concern — left a cut under my heart. I had been looking at litters of Samoyeds, balls of white fur with bright black harmful eyes. The perfect breed for a chill person like myself, I thought. But I couldn’t quite make myself bring one home. I had also seriously considered Labrador Retrievers, taken by their exuberant personalities and knowing that such a robust, energetic dog could easily share my life in the outdoors as well as be the bird dog I believed I sought after. But no Lab pup had given me that undeniable heart tug that said, “We are a team.”
The right brow of the dog lying by me went down as he held my eye. His left brow went up, implying, “You delayed with excellent reason.”
“Maybe,” I said, feeling my desire for a pedigree dog giving way. “Maybe,” I said once more to the dog whose eyes coasted crosswise mine, returned, and lingered. He did have the looks of a reddish yellow Lab, I thought, at least from certain angles.
At the sound of my voice, he levered his head under my arm and brought his nose close to mine. Surprisingly, he didn’t try to lick me in that effusive gesture that many dogs use with someone they perceive as dominant to them, whether it be a person or another dog — a relic, some believe, of childish wolves soliciting food from their parents and other adult wolves. The adults, not having hands to carry provisions, bring back meat in their stomachs. The pups lick their mouths, and the adults regurgitate the partly digested meat. Pups who eventually become alphas abandon subordinate licking. Decrease-ranking wolves continue to spectacle the behavior to privileged-ranking wolves, as do a fantastic many domestic dogs to public. This dog’s self-possession gave me pause. Was he not licking me because he considered us peers? Or did my body language — both of us life at the same level — allow him to feel somewhat of an equal? He circumspectly smelled my breath, and I, in turn, smelled his. His smelled sweet.
Whatever he smelled on mine, he liked it. “I am yours,” his eyes said again.
Disconcerted by his certainty about me, I got up and went off. I didn’t want to abandon my plans for finding a pup who was only six to eight weeks ancient and whom I could shape to my liking. The dog read my energy and didn’t follow me. Instead, he went to the others, greeting them with a wagging tail and wide laughs of his toothy mouth. “Excellent morning, excellent morning, did you sleep well?” he seemed to be saying.
But as I organized my gear, I couldn’t keep my eyes from him. Despite his ribs showing, he appeared fit and strong, and looked like he had been income outside for quite a while, his hair matted with sprigs of grass and twigs. He was maybe fifty-five pounds, not filled out yet, his fox-colored fur hanging in loose folds, waiting for the adult dog that would be. He had a ridge of darker fur along his spine, small golden plumes on the backs of his legs, and a tuxedo-like bib of raised fur on his chest — just an outline of it — scattered with white flecks. His ears were soft and smooth talk-like, and hung slightly below the point of his jaw. His nose was lustrous black, he had equally shiny lips, and his teeth gleamed. His tail was large and commanding.
The above is an excerpt from the book Merle’s Door by Ted Kerasote Published by Harcourt, Inc.; July 2007;$25.00US; 978-0-15-101270-1 Copyright © 2007 Ted Kerasote
Ted Kerasote’s prose has appeared in more than fifty periodicals, including Audubon, Inhabitant Geographic Traveler, Outside, Salon, and the New York Times. His most recent book, Out There: In the Wild in a Wired Age, won the Inhabitant Outdoor Book Award. He lives in Wyoming. Stay www.kerasote.com.
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