Sitting next to me on this frigid (when I say frigid I mean 28 or so which those in Barrow, Alaska would call “balmy”) early December morning is a twenty-pound or so little furry creature so far removed from her wolf-ancestors that she gets depressed when it rains and demands a muscle relaxer with a loud “whimper.” She’s a “Cockapoo” and it makes me pose the question, what happens when they cross a Chiuhauha with a Rottweiler? Some disturbed soul has done it like a mad scientist playing with doggies and God. I love dogs and more than that, I love animals in general and often I believe that they are life at one of its purest forms, like nature. I’m not comparing Gigi here to the Grand Tetons, but I am saying that nature and animals generally don’t THINK like we humans do. (Oceans may worry more than I realize but that’s another subject) No worries, no regret, no neurosis, and no voices in their heads with the relentless Sound of Music soundtrack running over and over again. I hate it when that one comes.
They just act. They exist and let life flow through them. Why do you think that children love animals from the beginning? It is because they’re cute and cuddly? Some are.
My point is that we intellectualize too much, try to say too many clever things and more than that, mistake thought for intelligence. I want to think less. I want to live more. I want to be more like Gigi, prancing through Yellowstone while the wolves chase her. She wouldn’t last 30 minutes out there, but at least she isn’t worried about her insurance premiums, her relationship, or her “feelings” about the environment and how she was picked on as a puppy.
Sometimes my mind is the most beautiful place in the world but the whirlwind of it exhausts me. I just looked at Gigi and she’s sleeping peacefully on the chair, probably dreaming about Fiji apple trees. She loves apples. A simple dog and her simple life. I envy the animals and the ocean as I seek to just be more and think less. I’m sick of solving problems and worry. I just want to live. I think I’ll let Gigi out now.
