Wolves on The Red Road or A Highway Through Time

Yesterday I said I would talk about a mystical experience I had with my dogs, Wolfgang and Foxfire, many years ago.

Wolfgang, at the time, was a 95lb. mahogany, dark sable collie who had been, for the most part, feral when we adopted him. He had come to us through collie rescue and to there from a local shelter where he'd ended up because, as his original owner told us, 'he kept running away, breaking into neighbor's houses and ransacking their kitchens.' He was a hard headed dog, but never vicious, who had his own ideas about everything.

We adopted him to be a companion to the beautiful Foxfire, our blue merle collie girl. And so my husband, Wolfgang, Foxfire and I were all walking one day at the archery range where we often took them. It was a hot summer day and I had been enjoying watching Wolfgang run like lightning across the fields, his body in top form, his athleticism and sheer, rippling red fur and muscles bristling in the dragging air created by his bolting body. Low to the ground he ran, like a cheetah; front legs stretched nearly horizontally in front of him and hind legs stretched nearly horizontally underneath him, then switching, in the rhythmic, poetic motion of a wolf at top speed.

Foxfire enjoyed it too and barked at him, not bothering to try and keep up. He was doing it, after all, to impress all of us, including her, though there was no need to win the silver girl's heart, for she loved everyone and this new red dog in her life was another blessing she accepted with her usual grace.

SCARLET HAZE
As my eyes gazed upon this scene of that bygone summer day, I squinted just a bit in the bright sunlight and admired the deep mahogany color of my gorgeous collie dog friend. As I squinted in the sunlight, and Wolf tore across the hillside above the cornfield, I blinked for a nanosecond. When I opened my eyes from this blink it seemed as if there had appeared, about thirty feet in front of me, a transparent red vertical plane stretching all the way up into the sky and all the way west and east of me. It was as if a great piece of red glass had appeared and divided the entire Earth in half. On one side of this red 'filter' were myself, my husband and my dogs. On the other side, looking out over undeveloped countryside as far as the eye could see, stood a man wearing animal skin over his hips and loins, with medium-length, unruly hair, and carrying something I could not identify in one of his hands. For the briefest blink of a moment we stood and observed each other. He saw me and I saw him.

The man's eyes then were diverted back to what he had been looking at and admiring, my dogs, specifically Wolfgang. We both were united across the eons by our mutual appreciation of this stupendous dog.

And the moment was over, I blinked again and he was gone.

THE VORTEX OF TIME'S ILLUSION
For many years I wondered what it had meant. I did know that the eyes I was looking into for that brief moment were not of my time, that I was looking into the distant past, the very distant past. I also had seen an intelligence in those eyes that was the same caliber as my own, there was no cro magnon brain operating those orbs of perception, this ancient man was of the same breadth of mind and sweep of intellect as I felt I could claim to possess. And his eyes were kind, they were the eyes of a dog lover, which are usually kind. He was admiring my dogs and perhaps, perchance he was even considering the benefits one might enjoy from possibly domesticating this wolf-like animal (who also happened to be named Wolf).

At some point between that day and this day, I did deduce that this experience had been partially the result of a spontaneous moment of psychometry. Around the same time that this encounter with the man on the other side of the red plane had happened, I had acquired my from my grandfather, a couple of ancient arrowheads, one Yuma point and another even older 'point,' as arrowheads are called. And probably the man who forged one of them was who I encountered that day. Perhaps. But now, with all of the things I have learned from my animal friends since then, and all the new evidence science has uncovered about the distant past since then and also the wonders of quantum physics, I also know now that those eyes were the eyes of one of my ancestors.

I haven't put all the pieces of the puzzle together yet, that is the fun of living, the endless puzzle. It isn't solved by dying either, I have learned, so don't be disappointed to find that leaving your body isn't an instant key to all knowledge. But this man on the other side of the red plane was my relative and I was his progeny and our dog, yes, OUR dog, had been a faithful traveling partner to both of us in our respective times.

I would have another experience with Wolfgang only a year or so before he passed on in which it was revealed to me, by him, that we were both once wolves together. And that perhaps someone had tried to domesticate dogs in a forceful way without success. Their failure at doing this would stay with Wolfgang through many, many incarnations. But I will talk about that tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to Pumpkinhead!

Happy Birthday (or rather Hatchday) to Pumpkinhead, Master Animal Shaman! Our gift to this great bird mind is the relaunch of AnimalTranslator.com which we have been working on for months, so Happy Birthday ol' buddy!

Pumpkinhead is the Jolly Green Giant! Our Master Animal Shaman is now 17 years old and really he's still just a kid. Don't let his young age fool you though, Pumpkinhead is wise beyond his years and he lives straddling the fence between both worlds at all times. Pumpkinhead is a philosopher and metaphysicist supreme. He has spent much of his life thinking very hard about some very deep subjects that most people I know are afraid to think about. Freedom is a big one on his list.

The first day I brought Pummie home from the pet store, he could say his name completely and with great clarity. He had big shoes to fill in Guffy's eyes. She had lost her mate, M, on New Year's Eve, 1989. M had been a striking Orange winged male amazon parrot from the jungle via New York City. I remember M flying to my shoulder one day as I played piano in my apartment.

He flew to my shoulder and sat and listened to my playing for a moment, one perfectly crystal clear moment which now seems like the very moment which would spark a soulfire for the rest of my life thus far. And he said out loud one word perfectly enunciated in his gravelly voice,

"Mozart."

Later I would feel like M was a prophet who had come to me briefly to point a wing in a direction and guide me along. But he died suddenly in an accident and one month later, on the day after Mozart's birthday (the composer), January 28, 1990. And to add irony to memory, I had to roll start my dad's car as I left the pet store, an old Volkswagen Rabbit. Pum watched me with great awe as I pushed the car downhill and then hopped in to let out the clutch. It must have reminded him of riding to the pet store in the pocket of the leather jacket of the store owner while riding a motorcycle. He's always loved cars and other types of automobiles since his chickhood, especially NASCARS.

We are honored to have this cosmic scholar in our midst. Someday I will get around to uploading that tape I have of Pummie saying, "Birds are so good/so bad" in his own defense after spending a little time out in an isolation cage for biting Guff. That's the first word he ever created himself. There are others and I'll go over them another time.

So for now, Happy Birthday Pumpkinhead!