Netul River Musings

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I am sitting on a bench, eating my lunch, watching the slack river, typing this on my trusty AlphaSmart. Across the channel, a bald eagle perches in a black cottonwood tree. The first bumble bee of the season just bumbled by. Canadian geese are honking. Frogs just sent up croaky chorus. Here comes a little drift boat with a puttering motor. A man wearing a brown hoodie is sort of fishing. A log truck rumbles behind me, carrying death from the watersheds. I am thinking of a phone call I received the other day, around midnight, from someone incredibly dear to me. It had been almost two years since we last talked. It was good to hear her voice; there is something in that voice that has always entranced me. Perhaps it’s how she articulates her astonishing vocabulary. I hope to hear more of this voice in the coming months and years and hear it declaim dreams and aspirations. I long to hear freedom in her voice.

This is a good riverine place. No one is around. I could teach a writing workshop here. To one other person. Perhaps that person could be the voice at midnight. I once saw her feed a candy cane to a gull. It was one the most graceful things I’ve ever seen.

I wish I knew the name of some of the waterfowl flying overhead. Sometimes I believe it is good to know the name of a species that confers delight upon me. That is a way of honoring it. We don’t honor nature enough. I have wondered if the current President of the United States has ever had a memorable delightful moment in nature. Golf doesn’t count.

It is time to leave this river and go back to the artificial world.

I love writing outside.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

Bonnie and Clyde Files 47 (Book Launch Week!)

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(Friends: this week marks the launch for the sale of my forthcoming book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Saved a Middle Aged Man. Only 300 copies will be sold and it won’t be available in book stores. For more information and how to order, got to nestuccaspitpress.com or order here from the blog. Half of the profits are earmarked for the Angels for Sara Sanctuary to continue their excellent work. Please support me in this new editorial endeavor as I get back in the game of life, literature and service. Below is an excerpt from the book.)

I stood at the edge of the river on a Tuesday morning. Bonnie and Clyde stood beside me. Showers showered. Heavy rain had fallen all night and the current was swift and the water cloudy.

Cloudy. That wasn’t the right scientific word for it. Murky? No, that was too mysterious, too noir. What was the word?

Does one need a jargon to understand a river or a person’s life? Scientists and therapists do. I don’t.

Turbidity! The word returned to me from my former life as a watershed council coordinator and water quality monitoring volunteer.

The river was turbid. It dawned upon me that right now, everything about my life is turbid. My future is turbid. Many people view me as turbidity in their lives.

When will my life become clear? Perhaps never after this. Perpetual turbidity?

If someone jumps into the river of this life with me, would that create more turbidity.? According to science, it would. I think not, however. I think it would stir up crystal clear waters.

I looked at Bonnie and Clyde’s old eyes. They were turbid. They reminded me of Sonny’s dying eyes. I looked at the river for a reflection. Nothing was there.

There’s actually a rating system for turbidity in the water. It measures particles or something. I had a little hand held machine that gave me a reading when I was testing the waters.

Testing the waters is an interesting phrase. It moves in many metaphorical directions.

I don’t have the ability to test any waters. I don’t have a machine to read my level of turbidity.

It stopped showering. I stroked the wet heads of Bonnie and Clyde and watched the river.

Raining Dogs and Bonnie and Clyde

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(Friends: this week marks the launch for the sale of my forthcoming book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Saved a Middle Aged Man. Only 300 copies will be sold and it won’t be available in book stores. For more information and how to order, got to nestuccaspitpress.com or order here from the blog. Half of the profits are earmarked for the Angels for Sara Sanctuary to continue their excellent work. Please support me in this new editorial endeavor as I get back in the game of life, literature and service.)

Dogs keep raining. I write for dogs. I write about dogs. I walk dogs. I talk about dogs. I eat with dogs. I play with dogs. I read about dogs. I will hold a dog book launch at the dog sanctuary with only dogs in attendance. A gig with dogs. Dig it. I’ll bring steaks for Bonnie and Clyde and smoked salmon jerky for myself.

Still, I wonder if I will ever have another dog of my own. Maybe helping out with other people’s dogs or shelter dogs or providing hospice care for dogs are the ways for me to serve best.

I do, however, dream of running wild down a beach with my beach dog. There will be no one there but us and the old sound of the ocean. We’ll run until we drop. Then we’ll dive into the waves. We’ll surface together and wrestle.

I sent the notice of the Bonnie and Clyde Files book to a few people who have disappeared or rebuffed me. They can think about it. That’s all you can ask.

It occurs to me that everyone without a dog who spends time on social media should delete their accounts and adopt a shelter dog. If a million Americans did this in a week’s time, the country would change overnight. Think about that. The awesome power people have to make change if they get up and move, move away from the computer, phone and tablet. To touch the earth, as Jim Morrison sang.

And finally on these dog thoughts: One brief scene in the 1973 film The Three Musketeers, surely must rate as the most visually arresting and bizarre use of dogs in the history of cinema. In the scene, the French king is playing chess on an outdoor chessboard in a luxurious garden. The chess pieces are dogs, dogs of various breeds, in costume to indicate their identities on the board: pawns, knights, bishops, etc. A white great Dane is one king, a black great Dane the other. Tiny monkeys sit atop their backs. When the king and the opposing players call out a move, a dog moves to that position on the board and sits or stands there. At some point, a commotion ensues and all hell breaks loose with the dogs. Game over.

Bonnie and Clyde Files 46

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(Friends: this week marks the launch for the sale of my forthcoming book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Saved a Middle Aged Man. Only 300 copies will be sold and it won’t be available in book stores. For more information and how to order, got to nestuccaspitpress.com or order here from the blog. Half of the profits are earmarked for the Angels for Sara Sanctuary to continue their excellent work. Please support me in this new editorial endeavor as I get back in the game of life, literature and service. Below is an excerpt from the book.)

I was heading out to the sanctuary when my SLR camera and collection of lenses caught my eye. They were resting on a bookshelf, on display, gathering dust, museum pieces from my former life as a decent amateur photographer and enthusiastic and innovative teacher of high school photography.

Why not dust them off? Maybe some unique arresting images of Bonnie and Clyde would animate my writing and if disseminated, raise funds for the sanctuary. Good photography can move human hearts to action. Good photography of dogs can catapult human hearts to action.

Twenty minutes later, I was unpacking my camera kit and mounting a special lens constructed from bendable plastic tubing that produced close-up shots that overturned the traditional idea of focus.

Yes, more close-up shots that overturn the traditional ideas of focus on subjects such as clearcuts and the criminal justice system. Yes, less hard focus on headlines and obviousness. More soft focus on the hardened hearts many of us have developed and the terrible institutions they have built. They are all around us. One merely has to look.

The light was all wrong for photography along the river; thus, it was the perfect time. There is never the perfect light to tell an important story. Those who wait, will never tell it.

I prepped the models with treats and we headed out for the photo shoot. They gimped along with more than their usual bumbling grace.

Some 30 minutes later, I had taken hundreds of photographs of Bonnie and Clyde, the river, the clearcuts, leaves of grass, elk scat, beaver gnawings, all in permutations of fuzzy focus that rendered the subjects sharper to my attention because I could discern new contours in the familiar.

We took a treat break and I sat down on a driftwood log. I saw an osprey hovering high overhead. The red bra was still hung up in the willows across the river. No one was ever going to unsnap it.

I scrolled through some images on the camera.

Contours. Finding new contours on a subject. Is that what I’ve been doing at the river with the dogs?Am I learning to see anew? Am I learning to see for the first time?

It occurred to me: I am training my focus as a writer on subjects that are completely out of focus for a vast majority of Americans. I am also training my focus as a newly reanimated human being to focus on what had been previously out of focus to me in my personal life: friends and family, presence and patience.

The camera’s lens must be turned both ways by the photographer, if that photographer (human being) has the courage to do so.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man

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Dear Friends:

I invite you to support my latest literary endeavor and help return me to a life of letters and service. The new book is called The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man.

It goes something like this:

In 2017, at the age of 53, I experienced an extinction of self. For the first time in my life, I could not get a job, I was nearly broke, and I had no freedom of movement or conscience. I was an American outcast trapped in a labyrinth known as probation, desperately engaged in the ultimate struggle to stave off marginalization. There I was, lying on the couch, talking to my dead husky, words echoing through the house that was empty because I had performed terrible hospice care on myself and given away almost everything.

Then I found two senior dogs named Bonnie and Clyde, residents of Angels for Sara (dog) Sanctuary, a refuge along the Lewis and Clark River. There, walking two dogs, I resurrected as a human being. I read the river, tracked elk, watched birds, slayed blackberries, skipped rocks, cursed clearcuts, walked in rain and went deep into heretofore unknown areas of my creative mind. With Bonnie and Clyde at my side, I learned important lessons of faith, friendship, family, face-to-face encounters and the timeless remedy of nature, lessons I intuit can enlighten others who experience a cataclysmic personal event. In The Bonnie and Clyde Files, I merge essay, cultural criticism, memoir, streams of consciousness and poetry to create a hybrid of a genre that is unlike any dog book I have ever read. I wrote on instinct, channeled Walt Whitman, and became a dog to better explore humanity, my country and the treatment of men and women at the hands of the state’s criminal justice system. I wrote to understand all the terrible, bizarre and wonderful things that were happening to me.

Please support me by purchasing The Bonnie and Clyde Files direct from Nestucca Spit Press, scheduled for release in the fall of 2018. The book will be unavailable in stores. A special limited print edition of 300 copies, signed by the author (and dogs), is now selling for $30 (plus shipping). A handmade bookmark will be included. Half of the profits are earmarked for the Angels for Sara Sanctuary to continue their excellent work. Customers can order through this blog and use Paypal or make other arrangements for payment by contacting me via email or through the Nestucca Spit Press web site. Barter is also accepted.

I thank you from the bottom of heart. I know I still have good work to do and this is just the beginning.

Bonnie and Clyde Files 45 (Book Launch Week!)

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(Friends: this week marks the launch for the sale of my forthcoming book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Saved a Middle Aged Man. Only 300 copies will be sold and it won’t be available in book stores. For more information and how to order, got to nestuccaspitpress.com or order here from the blog. Half of the profits are earmarked for the Angels for Sara Sanctuary to continue their excellent work. Please support me in this new editorial endeavor as I get back in the game of life, literature and service.)

As we headed back to the house, Jacque told me the story of how Bonnie and Clyde came to the sanctuary.

Bonnie and Clyde arrived at the sanctuary in June 2014. Clyde was then 12 or 13 and Bonnie 10 or 11. Their elderly owner had passed away and none of his family members wanted to keep the dogs. They had remained together at the Clatsop County Animal Shelter for almost a year, sharing the same small kennel. Clyde suffered from an old leg injury that had never properly healed and was overweight. Bonnie was overweight and suffered from hair loss. No one wanted to adopt them since they were older and had health issues. They were also a bonded pair that suffered extreme anxiety when separated. Jacque met Bonnie and Clyde while volunteering at the animal shelter and knew they were perfect candidates for the sanctuary, which had just opened. She arranged for Bonnie and Clyde’s transfer and on the day of their departure from the shelter, they jumped (!) into the back seat of her truck and barked and howled with joy on the ride over. They found the river, they found love, and in short order, demonstrated a remarkable recovery of mind, body and spirit.

I asked Jacque how she managed it all. She said, “Whenever things start looking tight or I get overwhelmed, I talk to Sara (the prematurely euthanized Rottweiler that sanctuary is named after). She is my angel watching over the sanctuary, and every time I talk to her, things start to turn around and work out. She is always around. When we have to help a dog transition to their next journey, Sara is there to help them. She is taking care of the sanctuary and I am just holding on for the ride. I could not have done any of this without her.”

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