Blessed by wagging tails
by Julie A. Wortman

I've promised myself that when I finish writing this editorial note (if the sun is still up) I will take our dogs for a walk at the beach. Deadlines prevented me from this daily ritual this morning, so I'm hoping to make up for lost time. My sense of balance needs restoring. My hope for the world needs encouraging. My place in the universe needs clarifying.

Big talk, I know. We are only speaking here about a simple outing along the water's restless edge with three black Labrador-ish mongrels. An outing that is, after all, pretty predictable. Buster will likely ceaselessly patrol for errant ducks, terns and loons. Hoping to seduce Buster into a game, Martin will prance along in proud and sassy possession of a driftwood stick. The aged Bedford, rocking back and forth on arthritic legs like a drunken sailor, will doubtless absorb himself in mysteries only a canine nose can detect, stolidly oblivious (and, frankly, deaf) to any special requests I might make of him.

Day in and day out we make this pilgrimage. The tides shift. Rain replaces sunshine, replaces fog, replaces snow. One day the beach is rocky, the next full of seaweed, the next spotlessly devoid of debris. Sand dollars abound and then are scarce. Islands hover above the horizon and then are shrouded from view by thick fog.

Each and every day the dogs greet the prospect of their morning walk with unlimited enthusiasm, while I'm frequently ambivalent -- as this morning, feeling the tug of work. And where their mood is always joyous, mine often isn't. I brood over fields rumored to have been sold for more trophy summer homes. Over profit-driven, seemingly unstoppable forces hell-bent on sacrificing caribou and a people's way of life for a few months of oiled energy. Over the bleak future of local teenagers running amuck for the lack of a sober parent's genuine companionship and care. Over my own abundant shortcomings, both personal and political.

Despair begins to circle my head like a hungry gull.

The blessing is that, over and over, I find rescue from such dispiriting meditations in the form of wagging tails that insist on a stick flung into the waves, now! That remark on the goodness, yet once more, of this day! That insist that life is life!

The wagging returns me to my senses. I find I have been sleepwalking. My vision slowly recalibrates to take in the nuance of maroon twigs against russet grasses, the play of light on the waves, deer tracks in the snow. Step by step, I recover myself. Regain my footing in this very particular place, at this singular moment of the globe's turning. Open my pores to the exuberance of creatures who are completely devoted to this unique moment, whatever the next may bring. Inhale salt air. Exhale despair. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Eventually we arrive back at the car out of breath, thinking of breakfast. Where the trip coming was full of excitement, the return journey is mellow with satisfaction. A painful mental landscape lies discarded on the sand for the tide to wash away. Greed, exploitation, cruelty and personal failings have not been miraculously banished from the world. But I'm again awake to creation's beauty, to the small excellences -- to life.

Julie A. Wortman, is editor and publisher of The Witness.