With a Dog on a Hillside

Story, Indiana

“Summer has circled around again, and with it one of my favorite quotes always comes back into mind:   "Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace."  

— Milan Kundera

Standing brookside in rural, isolated Story, Indiana, on as perfect a spring afternoon as any that has ever existed, I told my friend Rob Stilwell that if I could have a remote place of my own with such a brook, I would never, ever leave.  Not for anything.  We were there for lunch at the old Inn’s restaurant, and so this property was certainly far from belonging to me.  It was just one more beautiful view that I had to leave behind for the rest of the public to enjoy. 

He responded, “Yes, but wouldn’t you want a few well-chosen companions?”

And I assented, very honestly, that I would.  I’m a recluse; not a hermit.  I yearn for a companion all the time.

But isn’t this precisely the trouble – the word “well-chosen”?  We don’t get to choose a companion.  Not really.  Multiple times throughout my life I have chosen companions, but they did not choose me.  Conversely, others have chosen me as a companion, but I did not choose them.  At other times, even if we mutually chose, the bond was broken far too soon.  Or we chose one another for different roles, different purposes, which could not be reconciled.  There are never any real reasons for all of this, other than that humans are deeply complicated animals. Also, life puts obstacles in our way that act as fate. Differences in age and distance and obligations all prevent companionship at times.

After Story, at home that evening – an evening as glorious as the afternoon had been – I thought of Milan Kundera’s words, and of my dog, who was with me in that moment.  I happen to live on a hillside.  It is in borrowed space, though.  Most of my life is borrowed currently. 

I sat in the backyard, drinking wine, staring beyond the trees and the stately houses down the lane far over the hill into the distance where Highway 50 turns east out of town.  When I was a child I used to stand in the very spot I often stand now and would gaze intently out in that direction, dreaming big dreams of leaving home, meeting exciting people, living in vast, far-off cities, loving and being loved.    

Small towns are always called “quiet,” but the experience of this is more interesting than the word belies.  When I lived in a removed apartment complex beside a park in Raleigh, I had thought it was “quiet.”  But in metro areas, the noise works its way into your head and even into your soul.  After some time you’re not aware of that constant hum.  When I had to move back here to North Vernon, I realized that Raleigh had never been quiet – that this was quiet.  It was the first time I had ever really heard the quiet.  I’m not sure why – you would think that I would have first noticed the contrast after returning home from living in New York in my early 20s.  But, no. I didn’t really hear the quiet until my late 30s.  It was unsettling.  One does hear dogs barking off in the distance around town, a melancholy sound because it is so removed – you can’t find the dog and reach down to pet him.  In spring and summer, there are many songbirds, spring peepers, and the hum of crickets which is, for whatever reason, always so bittersweet.  There is also the distant sound of traffic on Highway 50 and the closer sound of traffic on Highways 3 and 7.  This sound is haunting, though, not comforting.  Rather than being the sound of bustling economic and social activity of a robust city, this is the sound of people moving off to distant places, better places.  It is the sound that haunted me as a child when I wanted to join the flow of Highway 50 off to some better fate. 

Yet it is with these sights and sounds around me on golden summer days with my dog when I wonder why I ever wish to leave this town.  There is really nothing that I need anywhere else in the world.  In many ways, I’m well suited for small town life.  I don’t like or need excitement or noise.  

But I do know very well the reason I have felt compelled to leave this place over and over again.  It has been to try to find a partner. Always. I have gone on great expeditions out into the world at tremendous cost, taken part in odysseys over wide swaths of land and water and mountain to find a companion to spend my life with.  I’ve driven thousands of miles, moved again and again to different parts of the country, given up months and years of my life to the search, gone bankrupt, exhausted every avenue.  The main reason I made the decision to go to grad school was because it would take me to a different area of the country to try to find a partner.  In all of the adventures I ever took, whether to New York or Raleigh or Chicago or the southwest, I really expected some sort of Austen-esque fate for myself.  I really did.  And then always found myself back here, alone and reclusive as always - though always with a dog.

The trouble with humans is that there is no control factor whatsoever.  It doesn’t matter how hard you try, how much you care, how much time or money or energy you invest.  It doesn’t matter whether you give up or if you don’t ever give up. There is no guarantee that you will ever find companionship or love. 

And, at last, this is part of what makes dogs extraordinary and why my heart fills with gratitude even to think of them.  This is why they are saints on earth and make life worth living.  If you choose, the dog will choose you back.  If you have the few dollars needed to adopt him, he will come home with you, and the two of you will take care of each other, and you will have a strong bond that is not subject to the vagaries of bonds between humans.  Nothing will break it unless you let it. 

With dogs, we have to know ourselves.  I know that I want to adopt a slightly older dog from a rescue organization. I definitely do not want a puppy. I’m terrible at training, and that’s important to take into account.  This and other factors also dictate that a smaller dog is good for me, rather than a larger dog I might fail to control. 

I have had my little dog snarl or snap at people, but I will side with my dog in any dispute like this and let the human leave the premises if he or she prefers.  My dog is loyal to me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and provides a continual supply of love on that same schedule.  Humans are incapable of this.  I know, because unfortunately, I am one. 

Also, humans, often through no fault of their own, are crazy.  Dogs usually are not.  They are remarkable touchstones of sanity and normality. 

Beyond being the ideal friends, and thus very inhuman in that sense, dogs are very human.  One has to know a dog.  He has his own preferences and quirks, his likes and dislikes, his own personality and temperament.  He will pick on cats and develop a strange obsession with the mailman.  This must be respected.  Just like a human, he will snap or growl if his needs and boundaries are not understood and honored.

With great shame, I admit that as a child, I did not like dogs.  I thought they were loud, ugly, smelly and gross.  In fact, a dog is loud, ugly, smelly, and gross, but what I came to understand later is that he has many positive attributes that more than make up for this, and that his perfections and imperfections taken together make him beautiful.  As a child, I was not yet mature enough to understand this.  Humans are also loud, ugly, smelly, and gross, and while still beautiful, have fewer positive attributes to redeem them than the dog does. 

Though we usually conceptualize the dog as the extrovert he is, I often think that dogs must be on this earth to bring consolation and companionship to shy, reclusive people.  A dog, extroverted as he is, is full of interest and compassion for the shy.  Certainly he is often the only or last one in your corner – the one who is with you through all of your deepest despair and who remains your touchstone to life and the world.  He will want you to go for a walk with him and he will be able to remind you how beautiful everything can be – how much joy there is in simple things. 

Though as with everything in this world, there are times when something can go awry with a dog, in general, there is a guarantee of love and companionship between you.  Of course, like humans, dogs can under certain circumstances be awful and cruel – can kill or hurt other dogs, other creatures, or even humans.  That’s the nature of most life on this planet. 

However, if you treat a dog with all the honor and respect that you do a human, you will rarely have any problems.  On my part, I try to treat dogs with greater honor and respect than I do humans.  But that’s only my choice.  I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m closer to animals than I am to people. 

When a human and a dog endeavor to bring out the best in each other, this is just about the best arrangement that exists in this world – the best we ever are or have the potential to be.  I would argue that it is as good, or better than, when two humans endeavor to bring out the best in each other – that the arrangement with the dog is far more likely to see itself out completely to a good end, with honor and friendly feelings.

But even a good end will break you.  In fact, a good end is what breaks you the most. Many have observed that the best things in this world are designed to leave us too soon.  When a good dog dies, it is like the passing of a saint.  I have actually wished at times that I would die before one of my dogs, because the pain of loss is so intense.  The love with a dog is as pure as anything we will ever attain, and so the pain over its loss is equally pure – almost unbearable. 

But we find these little islands of tranquility – the hillsides on glorious afternoons – in between the pains of loss.  One day will come the pain that will take us out, too, and there is no sense hastening it.  There will always be at least some of the hillsides until then, as well as many good walks.    

I lost a dog just as I was finishing up my last semester of undergrad.  He became very suddenly and intensely ill with acute pancreatitis, and over the span of only six hours descended from perfect health to death.  During the first few hours of his illness, I was working on some chapters of a useless novel that was part of my senior project.  As typical humans, that professor and I brought out the worst in each other, and the chapters are unusable trash – no part of them able even to be recycled into another project.  I’ve always felt it to be one of many terrible jokes of a vengeful god that I was working on these hollow, senseless pages when a very part of my heart dropped dead. 

But even when the best companion you will ever have is already right by your side, you must associate with your own kind.  It was recently put to me that a man had said that he was happy his wife had left him – that all he needed was his land and his dog.  While I can agree with this on some level, I wonder how long such a sentiment can really last.

With human companions, I have had both experiences – complete desolation, as well as periods with the close contact of a friendship or relationship.  I can say that it is always better to have people in your life than not – no matter how contentious or difficult or painful.  Not only is communion and expression simply nobler and better than nothingness, but I can say with authority that the pain of loss is far less painful than the pain of loneliness – the pain of “void.”  Acute pain is terrible, but passes; chronic pain is like the unrelenting power of attrition, and will break you completely. 

I said earlier that a partner was something I always greatly needed.  I can say that lacking one all these years, I now, without any doubt, have become the worst version of myself.  The remarkable thing is that a dog doesn’t care.  Even as the worst version of myself, he accepts and forgives me completely.

The search for a partner, though still wanted, seems less and less worth the energy. I don’t know how many more odysseys I can get up either the energy or the resources for in upcoming years.  I’ve spent up everything I have.  I’ve been on many long journeys, and I’m exhausted. 

In the first draft of Muller’s Mile, in my infinite foolishness, I gave the place a Mediterranean climate.  Later I asked myself what I was doing, reaching beyond myself to things I don’t know and probably never will know.  I’ve never even visited, let alone lived in such a place.  I replaced that climate with southern Indiana, which is the climate my soul knows.  I am not a nature writer and description is one of my greatest weaknesses, and I decided that if I at least wrote what I have always known, maybe it would somehow populate the pages with a familiarity, a warmth, a comfort. This river country is what I’m from.  As the years pass, I acknowledge that to walk out into the woods along the Muscatatuck River with my dog is the closest to anything like peace or happiness that I may ever experience.  There are far worse fates than sitting with a dog on a quiet hillside, and there is no better companion for a recluse than a dog.

Dogs are the meaning of life.  Nothing can start, or continue, or finish, without one.  This is my version of invoking the muses; dogs are my muses. With a dog, I wish to live like a monk and write.