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. Even as a tiny pup she looked wild, she acted wild, she sounded wild, she smelled
wild. But I was all too willing to overlook all of 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 as much about Rick as it
is 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 that would allow me to share it here, 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, Rick's and my 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 next few months, 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.
Less than a year after moving up to the
Rockies, I was back in Texas, newly married to a coworker with
whom I had developed a relationship. I really hadn't wanted to
move back to the Lone Star State, even though I'd lived here for
most of my life, because Colorado had been my childhood home and
in many ways still felt like home to me. But my husband,
Roger, had been offered a lucrative contract position with our
former employer, so I said my tearful goodbyes to the
Centennial State, and back to Texas we went.
Not long after our return, I got the contact information from
Rick and I called the man who owned the wolf refuge. He said that
I was welcome to come visit Maya, so Roger and I drove out to the
Hill Country and met up with the man, who immediately took us to
the fenced acreage where Maya lived. He knew exactly which one
she was and he pointed her out to me.
With a mix of trepidation and excitement I approached the fence,
assuming that Maya would immediately recognize me and would come
up to the fence to greet me. Instead, she just looked at me with
suspicion and kept a wary distance, as did her fellow lupine
inmates. The lot of them began slowly retreating as I drew closer
to the fence.
Maya's caretaker, seeing my dismay, said, "Give her a little
time. Keep talking to her." So I did, interspersing my words
with soft howls, trying to remind her of the many nights that she
and I had sat on our back porch howling together. At one point
she finally interrupted her slow retreat and stared at me for a
long moment, then took a few slow and hesitant steps closer to
me. The wolf rescuer said to me, "See, she does remember
you."
I thanked him for giving her such a wonderful home, but it was
with deep sadness that I said goodbye to her for the last time. I
would not be back for any further visits. It hurt too much.
* * * * *
Although he had relinquished Maya, Rick never lost
his love for the wildness that she 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.
