My wild loves

 

When Daniel Boone goes by, at night,
The phantom deer arise
And all lost, wild America
Is burning in their eyes.
~ Stephen Vincent Benét

* * * * *

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear

But I can't sing, I can't help listening
~ Jackson Browne, For a Dancer

Long ago I had a pet wolf, which, as I’ve often said, is an oxymoron if there ever was one. There really is no excuse for this, and I would never dream of doing it again. I learned the hard way, as others have, that even if a wolf is not in the wild, the wild will always be in the wolf. And as I have also said more than once, the cry of a captive wolf is one of the saddest songs there is. If a Robin Redbreast in a Cage puts all Heaven in a Rage, as Blake's poem would have it, what reaction must Heaven have to a caged wolf?

I didn't adopt the wolf, whom I named Maya, by myself; my partner in this ultimately unfortunate experiment was an incredibly gifted artist and photographer and musician named Rick Hartman, who always possessed a bit of wildness himself. I do not mean wildness in the decadent party-animal sense in which it is most often applied to humans. What I mean is that Rick had a lifelong passion for nature and wildlife, and always seemed happier outdoors than in, and probably would have been content to live his entire life in a cave or at most a yurt in the middle of a vast wilderness.

Though I love nature and animals too, my own material requirements have always been a little more fussy. This was an underlying conflict throughout my relationship with Rick, who for an extended period in my younger daze I considered to be the love of my life -- and once, when we were discussing our basic incompatibility, he said, "The thing is, I'm a wolf, and you're a dog." It was not an insult and he didn't mean it as one; it was just a comment on our different natures. Besides, dogs are some of my favorite people, so if you want to insult me, calling me a dog is definitely not going to do the trick.

* * * * *

Both Rick and I had significantly underestimated the problems that would come with adopting a wolf. This may have been in part because Rick himself was accustomed to having unusual pets from a young age; over the years he'd had a raccoon, an owl, shrews, a duck, an alligator, and an assortment of other furred, feathered, and scaled beings. And he and I were, I suppose, also lulled by the fact that a couple of years prior to bringing Maya home, Rick had adopted a wolf dog, whom we had named Kaliska (pronounced kuh-LEES-kuh). I found the name in a book called The New Age Baby Name Book; according to the authors, "Kaliska" was a Miwok Indian name meaning "coyote chasing deer."

The man who sold Kaliska to Rick -- and who happened to be the same one who sold Maya to us later -- had said that she was half wolf and half white German Shepherd, but that she had been a runt. Indeed, she was smaller than either a wolf or a German Shepherd; she was more the size of a coyote. And as it turned out, she also liked to chase deer. So her Miwok name was quite appropriate.

At any rate, Kaliska was profoundly sweet and sociable, and everyone who met her fell in love with her. "Kaliska was everybody's dog," Rick often said after a tragic accident took her from us a few months following our adoption of Maya.

My point is that in deciding to bring a wolf into our lives, Rick and I both reasoned, if you can call it reasoning, that since a half-wolf was so sweet and easy to manage, a full-blooded wolf couldn't be that much more difficult if adopted at a very young age and brought up with love and care.

But we were in for a surprise. A dog is a dog and a wolf is a wolf, and notwithstanding their common ancestry, they are not the same. Moreover, even wolf hybrids can be highly unpredictable, and some are dangerous. We had simply lucked out with Kaliska.

* * * * *

For my part, I really cannot say that I wasn't forewarned about the folly of trying to make a wolf into a pet. Years before Maya came into our lives, I had read a book called Of Wolves and Men by one of my favorite nature essayists, Barry Lopez. In the epilogue to the book he wrote:

Wolves don’t belong living with people. It’s as simple as that. Having done it once, naively, I would never do it again. Most people I know who have raised wolves feel the same way. All too often the wolf’s life ends tragically and its potential for growth while it lives is smothered. I am grateful for the knowledge I have gained but if I’d known what it would cost I don’t think I would have asked.

Although I remembered that passage very well, I was naively confident that Lopez's warning could not possibly apply to a wolf born in captivity and adopted when barely past weaning, as was the case with Maya. It surely couldn’t apply to one so coddled as Maya was. And she was indeed coddled. I remember staying up with her night after night after night in those early days, carrying her around like a human infant, jostling her gently, talking to her, singing to her, trying to calm her night cries. From the beginning, though, there was something about her that was so restless, so unsettled, so profoundly unhappy, but I was all too willing to overlook these things, telling myself, She’ll get over it, once she really gets used to us.

She never really got over it.

I'm sure there are those who would smugly say that she never "got over it" because she was coddled, and that we should have established ourselves as Alphas from the very beginning. But I am convinced that the problem went much deeper than that.

* * * * *

But this post is really more about Rick than about Maya. I have been thinking about him a lot today, March 2, because it is the tenth anniversary of the day that, after a brave and grueling battle with cancer, he left the planet, as his brother John expressed it when he told me the news. Rick and I never married, but we were together for seven years, and remained friends for the rest of his life. To say that I was deeply saddened by his loss would be the lamest of understatements.

I have had this post whirling around in my head for more than the ten years that Rick has been gone; I actually began it a couple of years before he passed away. Originally it was simply going to be a rumination on wildness -- in nature at large as well as in humans -- framed around my experiences of living with a full-blooded timber wolf (and a man who identified with that wolf).

I had planned to also work in some content reflective of this blog's original and primary beat of New-Wage/McSpirituality/selfish-help culture, which in this context would have involved snarky commentary on the way those overlapping factions have idealized wolves and have co-opted them as a self-serving symbol of their own noble, and largely imaginary, wildness. My personal and hard-earned perspectives on the uncomfortable realities of human and wolf interactions would be just another way of raining on the pseudo-mystics' parade.

At its core, however, the post would be a tribute to my own past wild loves, Rick and Maya.

But there were always other posts to write, and the months and years went by, and here we are.

And I find that even now, ten years to the day that Rick left, I'm having trouble collecting all of my thoughts into a cohesive whole. So for now, this post is just a "stub," my intention being to add to it over time. I just wanted to post something to observe this sad anniversary.

The "wolf man" picture at the head of this post is a photocomposition by Rick -- created the laborious old-fashioned way, years before Photoshop or AI -- consisting of a self-portrait and a portrait of Maya. It's one of my very favorite works of his. (Years before he passed, Rick had given me permission to share this image publicly as long as I attributed it.)

Another one of my favorites, of which I have a mounted print but not a scan at the moment, is a photocomp that Rick called "Traveler," in which he once again used himself as a model. The piece shows a man of indeterminate age, dressed in rugged clothes and an old hat, and holding on to a walking stick (or is it a wizard's staff?). He stands on a lovely grid pathway that is actually a perspective shot of one of Houston's glass skyscrapers, with a brilliant blue sky reflected in the glass.

What makes it so intriguing is that the figure of the man is in shadow, so the viewer cannot really tell if it is a frontal or a back view. It's somewhat like one of those optical-illusion pictures that can be interpreted in one of two ways: is it two faces, or a vase? And to me, the ambiguity has always been the point of "Traveler," for it is impossible to determine whether this is a departure or an arrival: is the traveler just setting out on a long journey, or just returning home from one?

Or both?

In her wonderful book, The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood, Sy Montgomery wrote, “…For the belonging that is home, I can thank, in part, the exile that is travel. Though they seem like opposites, they are more like twins — two halves of a whole.” I have a feeling that Rick understood that concept better than most people do.

* * * * *

As for Maya, who unhappily shared a home with Rick and me (and who never learned anything remotely resembling manners, and who always tried to grab our food off of the table when we were eating, and who ate one of our couches, and who was constantly escaping from our yard and running amok in the streets of our quiet suburban neighborhood, and who tried to eat the next-door neighbor's French poodle)... well, Rick got custody of her when we split up. I loved her, but there was no way I could take care of her.

Besides, Rick and I had since adopted yet another wolf-dog hybrid, a gorgeous half-wolf, half-husky boy whom I named Xen (pronounced "Zen"). We had bought him from the same man who'd sold us Kaliska and Maya; it had become a habit. And in case you're wondering, our split-up was a mutual decision and was amicable throughout, though there were, understandably, moments of sadness. Xen and I moved up to Colorado, while Rick and Maya remained in Houston.

Unfortunately, however, Maya became more of a problem for Rick over the years, and she even attacked him once. Ultimately he found a home for her at a wolf haven in the Texas Hill Country. She was still a captive -- releasing her into the wild would have been a death sentence for her -- but at least she had the company of other captive wolves.

But Rick never lost his love for the wildness that Maya represented, and he never lost his love for creating art that was often inspired not just by wildness and nature but also by worlds beyond the easily visible. In the artist's statement for one of his art shows years ago, he wrote: “The greatest art one can master is the art of mastering oneself. The highest form of creative expression must come from the depths of the soul in order to touch and awaken that sense in others. I wish to illustrate the freedom of spirit and the eternality of life that I might in some way bring the invisible into the visible.”

Rick always seemed to have one eye on that invisible world, though he clearly relished the visible world as well. His art, like his life, was a joyous celebration of both.

A few days after he passed away, I wrote this in the guest book on his Legacy page:

My heart hurts for the entire Hartman family – a big, beautiful family that I felt I was a part of for seven years. New generations have grown up since I left the scene, and it is gratifying to see how he has enriched their lives, as he did mine. After our split Rick and I remained friends throughout the years. While we were together, he opened my eyes to so many things, and actually helped to set me on my writing career. I will always remember him as an amazingly talented, funny-yet-serious artist and man who always seemed to have his eye on something that the rest of us could never quite see. (In fact that was what caught my own eye when I first met him at a long-ago party: his faraway expression. He was probably busy planning a new art piece or composition, even while we were conversing.)

My thoughts are with all who feel his loss.

In retrospect, Rick was not the love of my life, but a station on the way to Ron, who is the love of my life. Don't get me wrong: Rick's role in my life was so much more than a way station; I valued his love and his friendship, and I appreciate the gifts he possessed and the gift that he was and is, not only in my life but in the lives of so many other people.

I miss him.

And come to think of it, I miss Maya too, as much of a pain in the ass as she was, and as tragic a figure as a captive wolf truly is.

Most of all, on this saddest of anniversaries, I am deeply grateful for all of the people -- human and otherwise -- who have been and are in my life.