Brachas And Birth With Bertha - Part II

Part Two – Cliff Hanging

I soon hit the road again and stayed at the community in Tennessee a few weeks and then headed west toward the magnetic pull of the four corners. The days passed with Bertha and I camping in National Forests, “crashing” a night here and there at friend’s places so I could work a day or two at various day labor organizations where you were paid at the end of the work day by check or receive cash minus a percentage cut. Some nights we would sleep in the car in the middle of nowhere - one morning we awoke with ice all over the inside of the cars windows from our own condensation – or pitch a tent in the woods. One morning outside of Santa Fe we awoke to several inches of snow all around us with a deer brushing up against the tent…Bertha and I both just sat there staring out the flap breathing heavily in tandem with the “foggy mist” of breath slowly blowing from the animals nostrils, looking at the frozen mist on the deer’s innocent gray snout and listened to the snow gently hitting the ground. Everything on the outside of your realm gets quiet in a thick snow yet all of the intricacies within your sensory circle become amplified. The deer walked slowly away and I lay back on the sleeping bag wandering what day it was while Bertha crawled up on my chest and peered into my eyes.

Next stop was another communal farm in the Zuni Mountains outside of Ramah, New Mexico that was fairly new and barren. When I stopped the car Bertha jumped out and immediately took off running with a dog that lived at the community and I stood in horror and watched her little black body quickly become a dot on the horizon and then nothing. One of the residents greeted me and said not to worry because “Artemis will bring her back safely.” A little while later both dogs came walking up to the main tent area and Bertha looked tired and had a dirty gray coat around her mouth mixed with dust and ice. It was her baptism of native life - she ran wild through the pottery-sherd grounds of Navajo land. When walking in this area it was impossible to go 100 yards without seeing pieces of pottery partially embedded in the dirt or maybe even lying on top of it. You could usually discern whether or not it was Hopi or Navajo by the design but sometimes it was not possible to do so. The area now was Navajo but remains in dispute because the Hopi have lost a lot of land to the Navajo since 1868 due to cultural differences, US interference, Navajo reservation extension, and Peabody Coal.

I had been in this area a few months before and at one time was travelling with a couple guys I met and a considerable amount of time had passed since I had last communicated with my mother or sister. One evening we were camped on the side of the “highway” in a rough road side rest area and were greeted the next morning by a Navajo tribal policeman who asked for our ID’s, what we were doing there, and if any of us had warrants for our arrests. The officer took our ID’s back to his vehicle and I heard him say “yeah he’s one of them.” Officer Guy returned our ID’s and asked me to come to his vehicle with him, as he leaned against his patrol car he said “you need to call your mom and sister, they are worried about you.” My sister’s persistence miraculously tracked me down 1200 miles away in the middle of nowhere in Navajo land. Officer Guy got in his car and as he was beginning to drive away he said “hey lost one, call them, or I’ll arrest your ass…glad you are safe.”

Bertha and I spent days walking in the Zuni mountains, watching snow in the higher elevations at times, holding pieces of pottery that could have been 500 to a 1000 years old, and lying under the bright reddish gold leaves of the Aspen’s rustling with gravity’s pull. These trees remain the most beautiful I have ever seen to this day. After staying at the community a couple weeks I decided it was time to move on because I was heading north and the winter’s snow would soon be much heavier.

I stopped off at a little grocery store in Ramah to get a couple things when I left and asked the clerk if he knew Officer Jim Guy. Ramah was one of the few settlements out of many commissioned by Brigham Young more than 150 years ago that survived its harsh environment and hostilities as a mission to the Native people. The clerk said he had been there about half an hour ago. I told him the next time he saw him to tell him the “lost one” said hello.

A few hours later Bertha and I stopped off at Chaco Canyon and made a walk through a couple of the Kivas. The feeling is indescribable when you climb down into one of the complexes “pit-houses” - it is almost as if gravity has finally pulled you into the warm womb of the earth and it was a time to appreciate a beautiful history. This area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is very sacred to the Hopi and Pueblo Indians; much of it was closed to the public shortly after my last visit there due to its fragility and erosion caused by tourists. I sat down to absorb the surrounding while Bertha walked around and sniffed, sniffed, sniffed then finally laid down against my leg and went to sleep.

The next couple days we travelled through Los Alamos and Taos ultimately heading to Wheeler Peak in the Carson National Forest, it is the highest point in New Mexico at 13,000 feet and is a splendid sight. Sometimes I got lonely, sometimes I got scared, sometimes I just didn’t exist and one day during one of my “moments” Bertha came up to me and looked at me with her deep dark eyes and gave me a gentle snout-touch and looked toward the setting sun that painted the Sangre de Cristo Mountains an amazing rainbow of colors bouncing off of the snow covered trees. I knew then that Bertha knew.

The next day we headed toward Mesa Verde and hit Pagosa Springs and stayed a night in Durango on the way. Mesa Verde was covered in several inches of snow and parts of the ruins were closed but some were still accessible. Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to see the Mesa Verde region in the 1760’s while seeking a Santa Fe to California route but never got close enough to see the ancient stone villages, they remained a secret for another century. Bertha and I spent a couple days there and for the first time I realized she was like a little child in the snow. She never tired of catching snow balls and wrestling in it with me. The nights were colder at Mesa Verde than they had been at Wheeler Peak even though it was almost half the height. As I drove down the road out of Mesa Verde I could see shadows bouncing off the cliff walls covered in bright snow as if spirits of the past were once again making their way back & forth and up & down the canyon paths and wandered what day they had disappeared. Or was it I that disappeared. That evening we slept at a rustic campground at the foot of Mesa Verde and as I laid down to sleep I wandered what day it was.

The next day we made the short drive to Moab, UT and had an early afternoon meal in town before “doubling back” to Canyonlands National Park. Moab is a great place - beautiful, serene, immense, and picturesque but not the most dog friendly due to the fragility of the ecosystem’s fauna and vegetation so we had to be careful and were even questioned once by a Park Ranger. Dogs generally are not allowed on the back country trails and roads.

Moab sits kind of in the middle of Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park and is one of the many cities in this area settled by early Mormon pioneers during the 1800s. The area around what is now Moab served as the Colorado River crossing along the Old Spanish Trail and is indescribable. Due to much of the areas lower elevation the weather was more hospitable than the previous few days so Bertha and I decided to hang out for a while.

Brachas And Birth With Bertha - Part I

Part One - Ninth of Av

On Aug 2 1990 Iraqi ground and air forces began a concerted attack on the Kuwaiti capital Kuwait City after the beleaguered nation was denied financial reprieve of sorts from Saudi Arabia and others - two months later I received my Dept of Defense movement orders to deploy to Southwest Asia.

I returned home early summer of 91’ with a feeling of exuberance as if the moshiach had arrived not knowing that some of the days to unfold would derail my soul’s pains to that of apostasy and wonderings through darker nights than the smell of rotting flesh in the Arabian Desert. I finished college in 92’ while serving in the Marine Reserves and left the DOD a year later while working at a psychiatric hospital. Things were unsettled so I moved to Nashville winter of 93’ and “partied” for a while as if my soul was dancing on Tisha B’Av and wondered “How then are these dates to be reconciled? On the seventh the heathens entered the Temple and ate therein and desecrated it throughout the seventh and eighth and towards dusk of the ninth they set fire to it and it continued to burn the whole of that day. ... How will the Rabbis then explain the choice of the 9th as the date? The beginning of any misfortune when the fire was set is of greater moment. – (Talmud Ta'anit 29a)

That summer in June I found myself dancing “coked-up” on the floor of a gay bar thinking about the passing of the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and wondered who would save me. Days passed, weary and constantly hung-over from medicating my soul with anything and anyone that appeared to offer blanket from the temple’s fire and then Jerry Garcia died in August 95’ and I was back on the same dance floor on the Ninth of Av looking for my next “score.” The Rebbe and Garcia’s death somehow led me to a young Israeli named Yuron - he preferred to be called Delilah - fresh out of the IDF who instead of travelling to India or somewhere more chic journeyed to a communal farm in rural Tennessee held in trust by a group of fairies. I spent weekends at the farm but remained floating through the days at times like an asteroid under gravity’s watch at other times like a piece of cotton fighting gravity’s strength. Maybe it was the gray beards that adorned The Rebbe and Garcia’s face. Before I realized it I was “crashing here and there” on different friends couches with no foundation remaining and answered the beckoning to stay with a friend’s mother in Florida who needed a “care-taker”. That was me…you got your man. It was more of a saving grace for me than anything else.

I stayed in Florida until late spring of 96’ and eventually hit the road travelling…Rainbow gathering, faerie gathering and eventually took a twenty hour bus ride home from New Mexico Hopi land later that summer with all of my possessions in a Kelty backpack on my shoulders. I stayed at my friend Karen’s house visiting my mom and sixteen year old lab Sheba that had been so damn loyal since I first brought her home when she was a tiny puppy.

I spent many of my young teen years “lost” in the woods surrounding our house walking and talking to Sheba, she always looked at me and listened with her deep dark eyes and gentle snout-touch as if saying “I understand”. Sheba gave birth when she was ten months old, was taken to the pound when she was a year old because she wouldn’t stop barking…but was quickly brought back. She simply wanted to be with me in those dark nights. The days seemed like they would never end.

When I returned “home” in the summer of 96’ Sheba’s eyes had turned gray, she had a beard of the same color and had begun having difficulty with some organ functions - bowel and urine mainly - and had become arthritic-ridden. Even though I had no place to live I refused to let her die without her soul carrying me further so I looked for a replacement…

…newspaper ad for “free gentle and kind lab to loving home” took me to Wendy in rural Alabama. I walked into the house after driving an hour and went through a two-part interview by the mother and a daughter questioning why I wanted “Wendy” and what type of person I was. Then I was introduced to a beautiful 14 year old child who was lying in a hospital bed named “Brad”. The mother explained to me that Brad had suffered some serious birth issues and was unable to communicate “normally” other than by blinking his eyes and Wendy had been a real “G-d sent” for him but they just couldn’t keep her. Brad looked at me with these deep dark eyes that seemed to hold centuries of pain and understanding and blinked quickly and as I felt a dark shadow blanket my soul the mother cheerfully said “now Wendy” and this little black piece of fir came sliding across the floor like a star zooming to earth. I knelt down and before I knew it I was lying on the ground with this six to eight pound ball of joy licking me and peering into my eyes with terribly deep dark eyes that seemed to hold centuries of pain and understanding and the boy’s mom said “please put her in Brad’s arms one more time.” I picked Wendy up and set her in the bed and she gently crawled to Brad’s chest and immediately laid down looking directly into his face with her snout practically wetting his motionless innocent lips – his eyes stared at her tiny face while blinking rapidly and after a couple minutes she looked up at me and Brad’s mom said “it is good.”

The drive home was painful thinking about Brad’s mom telling me that he probably wouldn’t live another year and I felt like centuries of understanding were knocking at the door begging me to let them in and I cried for the first time in a long time asking “WHY?”…while the Dead tune ‘Bertha’ played on the radio Wendy crawled into my lap and pierced my soul with her dark eyes that seemed to hold centuries of pain and understanding looking up to my face as my tears fell on her innocent lips.

I spent a few weeks going back and forth from my friend Karen and mother’s house “introducing” Wendy to the world of Sheba. Sheba actually seemed to brighten up and without any hesitation opened up true maternal knowledge of centuries of understanding to the young pup. The three of us spent hours romping through the woods, Wendy would gnaw on Sheba’s legs and crawl on top of her as she acted like she was going to eat her and Sheba would “growl” – it was more like a pleasant moan -Sheba would drop her treat for Wendy to take…

One day in August I saw Sheba asleep beside her dog-house that she had not been unable to get in for quite a while due to her back and hip problems and Wendy was inside of it asleep and I knew the time had come. I took Sheba the next day to a veterinarian that advertised “cremate and save”.

I had to carry Sheba into the office because she literally could not walk and sat her in a chair while I went back to the car to get Wendy. When the vet called us I carried Sheba to the room practically dragging Wendy with her leash and laid the old one on the table. The veterinarian’s technician came in and asked me routine questions for his paperwork and then began cleaning Sheba’s lower arm and I began sobbing…so too did he. The doctor, who was old and appeared wise beyond his years, came in and nonchalantly held Sheba’s arm in his and rubbed Wendy’s face who was curled up against my chest in my left arm, looked at me with deep dark eyes and asked “is this what you wish to do?” I mumbled something that was inaudible but shook my head yes and as the doctor inserted the syringe he began to cry also. I looked down at Wendy and her deep dark eyes momentarily peered into my eyes and then looked at Sheba and put her paw on her nose while I rubbed Sheba’s gray beard…shortly thereafter Sheba’s head drooped and the doctor left the room. Wendy’s little paw dropped with Sheba’s head and I realized that Bertha had been born.

“The Ninth (day) of Av. It usually occurs during August.”