The Journey Part 36

MY BEST BUDDY

My best friend has Alzheimer’s.  He lives, maybe, fifteen minutes from where we once lived in Olympia.  I mention that because, even though we have been friends for fifteen years now, I might have seen him once a year for the last five years or so. His Alzheimer’s and my rut were the reasons, him lost in his head, me lost in a lackadaisical attitude.

Since I returned from our three-month road trip, I’ve visited him four times, and it is his driveway, in an HOA, that I am squatting in tonight.

Why the sudden flood of visits?  I think it’s important that I catch up on lost time, and I’m hedging my bets against the possibility that we won’t have any other chances once I pull up stakes and head on down the road again.

I made a mistake four years ago, when my childhood, high school, and college best friend died of cancer.  I knew for a full year that he was dying and yet I only managed to visit him, in Oregon, twice, and although I try very hard to avoid regrets, I deeply regret that lack of action on my part.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this thread, but I think, on some level, most of you can relate.  We just seem to think, despite the illogic of it, that we have unlimited time on this spinning orb, or perhaps we don’t really think it, but we act like we do.  Many of us spend more time worrying or chasing our tails or watching the boob tube than we do spending time on matters of the heart and soul, and I find that sad . . . and most definitely I am guilty of it.

That certainly is behind Bev wanting to spend the winter with her adult children, get to know them better, their spouses better, and her grandchildren better. Bev feels Old Man Time’s breath on the back of her neck, even though she is only sixty-two. She realizes, as do I now, that time is a gem in the commodity trade, a rare gem, and it is not to be wasted.  And perhaps that is partially an explanation for my need to adopt the nomad life. I need to live as I’ve never lived before. I did Suburbia and, at seventy-four,, it’s time to try something a bit more exciting and challenging.

Anyway, like I said, I really don’t know where I’m going with this thread . . . or perhaps I do.

COUNTING DOWN THE MINUTES

It is May 24^th as I sit to write this. I’ve been taking care of odds and ends since we came home, will do the same until maybe the 29^th, at which time Maggie and I will climb into Puddle Walker and head, me thinks, for the Washington coast . . . then the Oregon coast . . . and we will return to pick up Bev and her son mid-July. About a month-and-a-half on the road, just and old man and his dog, and I can accurately say we have no game plan whatsoever. I’m kind of looking at it as a trial run prior to the big road trip starting in September, going all through the winter and into 2024.

My main objective for this mini trip is twofold, I guess: I want to work out all of the kinks of living in a bus, just me and Maggie, and I want to concentrate on boondocking (free camping) for the majority of the trip. From now until I pick up Bev in July, I am all about not spending money whenever possible, build that bank account back up to previous levels . . . and . . . learning how to truly live, on my own, without the safety net of Bev and a horde of hikers.

I’m not concerned about it. I can entertain myself quite well, reading and writing and filming and exploring. Do I wish I had another human along for the ride?  Yes, I suppose I do.  It would be preferable, if I’m squeezing the maximum truth out of these words, to have companionship.  But, and this is a large but, no pun at all intended, I can have as much companionship and human interaction as I want to have, on the road, camping in remote places. It really is up to me to seek out others. The onus, and I’ve always loved that word, is squarely upon yours truly.

Let’s call it an experiment.

It should be interesting if it’s possible to teach an old dog new tricks.  As Dan Fogelberg once said, this is the chance of a lifetime, in a lifetime of chance, and I don’t plan on allowing it to escape from my clutches.

MAGGIE AND TOBY

I have not spent nearly the time I should have writing about Maggie and Toby. Considering the amount of time I spend with those two mutts, one would think I would write about them daily.  You dog lovers who read this will fully understand why I spend as much time as I do with my canine pals, and why I am about to wax poetically about them now.

Maggie and Toby are Northwest Farm Terriers, a new breed, started in Washington State, about thirty years ago. The goal, when they started fine-tuning this breed, was to have a smaller Airedale, a farm dog, loyal herders, alert and responsive to instructions.

All of that description is true of Maggie; not so much about Toby.

They are sister and brother from different litters. Maggie is almost six; Toby is six months beyond four, and they are as different as ebony and ivory in their behavior, a weird metaphor, for sure, but I think you understand.

Toby hates motor vehicles. Maggie will ride in virtually anything, as long as her human is with her. Maggie is distrustful of humans upon first meeting; Toby has never met a human he didn’t immediately like. Maggie is the protector, took on a coyote once; Toby is afraid of loud noises and his own shadow.  Toby is a playful clown; Maggie is Miss Serious.

Dog lovers will understand me when I say I adore them both, but because Maggie was our first, she will always be #1 in my heart and, the real of it, Maggie spends most of her time with me, while Toby spends most of his time with Bev.

I talk to Maggie. I pamper her, no doubt about it. I can read her moods, and she mine. I credit Maggie with my staying in good physical health, and I credit her with my quick recovery from hip replacement . . . and, if you really want to get down to the ground floor of veracity, I credit her, on many occasions, with keeping me sober and in touch with what is really important in life.

In a rare moment of sharing, if I’m really allowing myself to be vulnerable, I can admit that I will be devastated the day Maggie passes on.  But I don’t allow those thoughts to pass through my mind often, and I certainly don’t say them out loud.

What I do concentrate on is the comfort and happiness my Maggie girl gives me, and will continue to give me because, and you all understand this, dogs are the physical embodiment of loyalty and unquestioned love.

Maggie, literally, never takes her eyes off me during the day. She is always by my side. If I get up to go to the bathroom, she follows me to the bathroom door. Where I go, she goes, and I find that comforting, a trip back in time, almost seventy years, when a little terrier named Pixie was Billy Holland’s first dog and best friend.

As I take the slow slide back into adolescence, perhaps that is as it should be.

I was going to do some research, the other day, into the origin of the domestic dog, so amazed I was by Maggie’s devotion to me, but then I thought “why ruin it with scientific and archeological facts.”  A dog’s loyalty just is.  Period. End of discussion.