True North
When my college career met its natural end, I moved back to my childhood home outside Boston and paused for a few months to take stock. I had work on a suburban tomato farm, a few decent shotguns, and a girlfriend in another state who was beautiful and fiery and self-assured, but not all that nice, to me or anyone. Her name was Melissa. Her lack of niceness was cause for some concern, but I’d spent the year prior telling myself that love is supposed to be torturous, and that heartache serves as inescapable proof of something real, something worth fighting for. I listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell during that time. I mean a lot.
Heartache notwithstanding, a college degree and an open road ahead afforded me some agency that I hadn’t known before, and my first big, grown-up decision was to get a bird dog. The acquisition of this pup was a process. I was screened intensely by the breeders, who were justifiably concerned about my pedigree and my prospects, and who were far more inclined to keep their pups than let them go. I lay in my boyhood bed at night asking myself hard questions, assuming that well-worn assurance that in the struggle there was truth. How would I pay for dog food and vet bills? How would I navigate the uncertainty of my living situation? Amidst so much unknown, how could I commit to another being’s lifelong wellness, fulfillment, and joy? In the end, though, I simply knew that the life I wanted included a bird dog of my own, and so I got a pup. I named him Sleeper, and carried him home on my lap, as in love as I’d ever been, and just about as nervous.
Not long thereafter, I loaded the little guy into my truck and made the long drive north to central Maine, where Melissa then lived. I was terribly proud of little Sleeper, and proud of my role as his owner, and I wanted badly for Melissa to see something in me, and something in him too, that would melt her frostier edges. We arrived at her house, and I put the little guy down on the grass to pee while Melissa stood on the porch, hands on hips, a signature pout on her lips. “Why is his tail so short?” she asked, nodding at the little stump that is the standard of American Brittanys. “And since he’s probably not housetrained yet, you are going to have to leave him in the truck. I’m definitely not cleaning after your dog.”
I’ve found that at certain points in my life I’ve stumbled into moments of abject clarity, and absolute conviction. I looked down at my puppy. He was on his back in the grass, ears flopped wide like wings, doing battle with a maple twig. I looked up at a beautiful woman standing on a porch, one who said she loved me but who never really saw me, or liked me all that much. I’m sure there was more conversation, but in my mind’s eye, I picked up my baby bird dog, got back in the truck, and made the long drive back to suburban Boston. My heart was not aching, and my conscience was clear. I knew that my life, with a little bird dog in it, had taken a turn for the better.
It's been a long time since I brought Sleeper home, and almost as long since a car cut him short on a winter road, when he still had a thousand birds left to find, and a thousand apple orchards to find them in. I’ve had other dogs since, and I’ve moved about here and there, married a woman who loves me, and raised a family. I’ve been blessed to build a life. And for better or worse, I’ve always used a bird dog as a compass, a means of ensuring that my path is one aligned with that feeling in my heart that tells me I’m on track. In my decisions of how to build the life I want, I ask whether a bird dog fits into the picture I am painting, and if that dog’s life will be a good one. If in that picture, in whatever place I land, there is room to run, a bittersweet tangle to get lost in, and a woodcock dancing into the moonlit sky, then I’m ok. If in that picture I can open the back door and let a bird dog be a bird dog, I know I’m staying honest, to myself and the dog beside me.
Bird dogs are built for finding things that aren’t always obvious… things that matter, things that are real. All we have to do is trust them. They know more than we ever will.
First Published in Covey Rise Magazine
