My beautiful dog family member, Alita.
November 2023
A Nature Communication Adventure
This is a story I wrote for an upcoming anthology of animal and nature communication stories!
Life is truly a miraculous thing! While so often bordering on wondrous and miraculous, it can simultaneously feel gnarled and sometimes even a little wicked- like the silhouette of an old poky Juniper Tree beaming in the red light of the setting desert sun. We are all living during a particularly challenging time in the World, and as humans we may find ourselves knee-deep in painful or complicated feelings as a part of the times in which we are entrenched. It can be especially hard during these times to remember the wondrous parts of life, and yet it is so important. Staying connected to life's wondrous qualities grants us a vital lifeline for navigating the grief and challenges that we will one day inevitably face.
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One day, while contemplating the war and oppression currently happening here in our World, I found myself burdened with an overabundance of grief and despair. I felt emotionally stuck, like a stick pushed down into mud and left to dry out in the thick sludge. My feelings of despair felt so overwhelming that I knew I would drown in an ocean of my own tears if I ever allowed them to surface. I knew then that I needed to seek the wise counsel of my essential allies, the Trees. I took the sentiment to a very wise Juniper Tree with whom I was acquainted.
This particular Juniper sits spread against the wire fence over which they have grown as time meanders. Their peeling back breaks the insistent wind; sweeping branches reach towards the heavens. The crystallized sap adorning its trunk glints in the golden light, sparkling with idiosyncrasy and dare I say more than a little humor. Wounds can be beautiful, too. Sorrow and grief exist within and alongside the potential capacity for joy, humor and happiness. The Juniper Tree reminds me that there is a kind of living magic everywhere in this World for us to engage with, and that it is accessible through interactions with Nature. I asked the Tree if they would help me, and the Juniper Tree then spoke to me, and told me to visit daily and pour my sorrows and wretched sadness into the earth by their root system so they might hold them for me. They also told me that my incessant grief may be transmuted by the Tree into joy and essential nutrients for the plants and the rest of the World.
Every day while I was walking my dog, I would stop and put a hand on the Tree’s shaggy bark and imagine my despair as a river, flowing into the dirt and nourishing roots, the watershed, and the vibrant ecology of microbes and bacteria that make their homes in the soil. I would imagine the roots of the Juniper Tree purifying my sorrow like an alchemist, and integrating it back into its rightful place. At first, I felt a little silly, but then I started to have tangible experiences of feeling lighter and less weighed down. I even felt tingles a few times! Over the course of several months, I was able to be more present with myself and these feelings that had originally been so difficult to accommodate, and now my life has taken a dramatic turn for the better.
The tide of life ebbs and flows, and the newfound shallows of metaphor reveal eccentric tidepool dwellers, anemones waving softly in the voids of errant possibility. There seems to be so much sense of opportunity, now more than ever before. Having said that, it’s not always the good times that make us who we were always meant to be, but sometimes it can be the most challenging times that shape our values. I have learned this from many beings in Nature; including another windswept Juniper, baring its soul under the thirsty desert sky while clinging for decades to the edge of a high rock, eroded with the passing of ages.
This other remarkable Tree is capable of growing out of a vertical rock face on a common route of travel for me, in a way that seems utterly impossible. They are small and stunted but remain green, indomitable and full of fresh vigor. This Tree grows proudly along the red rock faces that line the highway, inviting all other beings to thrive in situations of difficult circumstances. When I see them, I am ever reminded of the message from the Juniper Tree spread along my driveway fence. Every now and then, I still visit that same Juniper, but instead of pouring despair into their root system, I visualize a shining fountain of gratitude that nourishes me, the Tree, and the World at the same time; for we are all but one.
September 2023
An Animal Communicator Adventure
Moving into a new space is always hard and overwhelming; when there are animals involved, it gets exponentially more complicated, whether that means trailering horses, wrangling cats or just trying to convince the dog to get in the car already. This summer I moved into a new place and my husky/blue heeler Alita and my fluffy and indomitable cat Mooshoo came with me and they both seemed to settle in just fine. The suite was small and cozy, Alita loves the attached yard and Mooshoo gravitated immediately to the large window. But there was a caveat: there were two dogs already in the backyard that is attached to my little suite, separated by two gates! And they barked so much in a very shrill high-pitched voice whenever they caught sight of us. So thus, I was presented with the challenge of integrating Alita into the backyard pack.
When the dogs saw each other through the fence, there was a lot of loud barking, growling, Alita was even lunging at the fence. Though normal reactions, these are not typically cues that demonstrate calm behavior, but even so I let the dogs all into the yard together for about fifteen minutes (Alita is much more demure when there is not a barrier to keep her feeling like a big shot. I know she doesn’t really want to hurt anybody) and everything went well! There were some growls, hackles raised, but no fight and some tail wags that were a very good sign, enough to possibly indicate a future friendship. Alita even seemed to shrink against my legs, like she was afraid of these dogs even though they were probably a third her body weight. In reality, she was probably letting the other dogs know that I already belonged to her, but at the time I got the genuine impression she was scared. My boyfriend also mentioned that he noticed it. When I brought Alita out of the yard there was a lot of barking through the fences, so much that the neighbor got upset!
Cue animal communication class with my amazing mentor Maia Kincaid! I love these classes so much because we get to help animals and their humans every class in real time, and it feels really fulfilling and is very touching a lot of the time. Sometimes a member of the group will have an animal they want to speak to, or other times an outside person is invited to come to class so we can work through whatever the issue is that they’re having. This time, I asked the group to speak with Alita and the other two dogs in the yard to see if we could troubleshoot integrating them for the sake of the neighbor.
What is so amazing about telepathic animal communication is that we as animal owned humans make an astonishingly large amount of assumptions about our animal owners. We make assumptions about what the animals like, what they don’t like, what they feel or don’t feel, and a whole bucket of other things too. Animal Communication gives us the ability to clarify by talking to each animal and asking them directly, instead of assuming that you already know the answer as the learned wise human that you are.
In class when we talked with the dogs, it sounded less like they were scared or aggressive, and more like they were a pack of good friends already that were excited to hang out and do stuff together. This is actually surprisingly common that we see a non-aggressive dog acting as if they were big and scary in social situations. The dogs told us that none of them were scared of the other, and that they were excited to have someone to play with.
Because I had already assumed that my dog was scared of the pack and seeking comfort, I cut myself out of being able to perceive that she was actually happy to interact, and that the barking/lunging had a lot more to do with my own anxiety about introducing them than what she was actually feeling. Lesson number one, human: you are not the one in charge! You think you are, but you’re not.
After class, I went with Alita directly to the backyard and acknowledged that my own anxiety was likely the issue, and intentionally opened the gate to allow the dogs to all be together in the yard. There was still just a little tension and growling, some hackles raised, but again, no fight! This was really, really great work. Animal Communication allowed me to step up and be a better human for my dog, and to acknowledge that I was projecting feelings onto her instead of just existing beside her like in a real partnership.
It just goes to show that when you assume stuff, you make an ASS of U and ME, and can end up creating more of a problem for yourself. As humans, we don’t understand a lot of things about our animals, myself included, but we pretend to, and that can get in the way of actually, truly knowing them. This is where animal communication excels in bringing humans and animals together as a team time and time again; instead of assuming you know why this animal is participating in this particular behavior, why not simply ask them?