THE STORY OF MOONSHADOW
(Mooshadow, in the North Cascades, Washington summer of ’81)
THE STORY OF MOONSHADOW
Moonshadow was a Dalmatian-Lab cross from the Big Island of Hawaii, part of a litter of 14 that was the unplanned result of his determined Lab father working his way through a fence to meet his spotted mother. It was January of 1981, when I first met him. I was in Hawaii just beginning to work on a six month senior thesis and internship studying the Kona forest ranch ecology on my then girlfriend Maile’s family cattle ranch.
We lived up “mauka” (the highlands in contrast to the coastal “makai” lowlands) a 7 mile and one hour bumpy drive off grid at the edge of an old forest, and would come down into town about once a week to stock up on supplies. One morning we had just arrived at the health food store in Kainaliu right next to the Aloha Theatre and Cafe, and being really stoned at the time (Hawaiian pot is as good as they say, or at least was 35 years ago), I remember walking up to the store and seeing a whole box of black puppies being given away. We gushed over them and then the kid managing the litter tipped the box over to show them off, and all these puppies spilled out and began scattering across the sidewalk in every direction.
I just stood there giggling in delight, and at that moment a man emerged from the store, a real Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers kind of guy with dark straight hair down to his waist. In an instant he took in the scene, looked me up and down, pointed at me, and announced, “I now pronounce you man and dog,” and strode away. Surprised, I looked down at my right side and there sitting calmly at my feet was a little black pup. That pup became my Moonshadow.
Moonshadow had a blissful puppyhood. He had the companionship of a couple of old ranch dogs, Heidi the Lab and Linus the Heeler, as well as a couple of doting humans. He spent his days running and hiking in the Ohia and Koa forests and highland pastures, and he learned to swim in the ocean, taking to it like a natural. When our six months were up and we had to head back to the mainland I built him a travel kennel made out of old Koa wood slats and hardware cloth. It must have weighed over 50 pounds, and looked quite a bit like one of the old ramshackle coffee huts we’d been living around. When we finally arrived in Seattle after a long day of traveling it warmed our hearts to see that someone at the Honolulu airport had opened his cage and left him a dish of water with a rag soaking in it to keep it from spilling. That was the kind of aloha spirit Moonshadow had been raised with but which he would never return to.
Summer in the Northwest is not a bad time for a Hawaiian to make the Mainland’s acquaintance, and Moonshadow the pup, like any other pup, was ready, willing and eager to take it all in. That was a formative time for him for sure, and I still remember a few of his experiences vividly. We took him up into the mountains soon after we’d returned to explore the alpine zone of Hannegan Pass in the North Cascades. When he first saw an ice covered lake he ran out onto it despite our protests and then proceeded to fall in way out in the middle. I don’t remember the anxiety I felt at the time very well, but I do remember the sight of him desperately having to rescue himself and claw his way back onto the frozen surface. I also remember how utterly shocked he looked to experience cold water for the first time.
Moonshadow was ”my dog” so that summer while I attended classes at the U. I’d take him along with me, teaching him how to heel, walk, sit, stay as we navigated the sidewalks and streets of Bellingham. I’d tie him up on the forested hill above campus and then listen to him bark and howl as I sat in class. One day I took pity on him and brought him down to campus and tied him up to a bike rack outside the lecture hall. When class was over and I went to get him I found him instead sitting patiently in the back seat of a campus police car (along with another big dog), ready to be driven away. I got his $5 ticket and retrieved him just in time. I doubt I ever would have figured out how to find him again.
One of our domestic rituals that summer was to walk the mile or so to a local 7-11 each evening to get a pint of Haagen Dazs ice cream, and then walk home slowly eating and savoring it. Of course we always took Moonshadow. One evening he was running along beside us and then suddenly disappeared, the next thing we saw was him running out from someone’s backyard holding a huge piece of fresh salmon in his mouth. He pranced up the middle of the street shaking his head vigorously scattering chunks of steak until he had a manageable sized piece (maybe only 4x8”) to eat. We were horrified yet ran after him laughing nervously before the humans who were no doubt planning to have a lovely barbecue discovered what had just happened.
That summer Moonshadow lived like a prince, climbed mountains with us, explored the local forests, coastlines and streams and learned some city manners. He was the mascot that glued our little family together. That fall we bought land in Eastern Washington, and in the early spring of ‘82 we moved to White Mountain in the hills of Northern Ferry County to begin living off the land. For the next 10 years Moonshadow lived in those hills, treating it all as his open range. He eventually had some companions to share his adventures with, Osier the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Juniper his son by a liaison with a local Border Collie named Sally, and Pluto the black cat.
We lived those first few seasons in a tent camp, sleeping under a canvas lean-to and cooking in an open air kitchen while we built our stone and log cabin and established our garden and orchard. He was short haired so sometimes he’d wear my down vest to keep warm in the cool mornings. Once he got into our stores and stole a huge block of chocolate. We only discovered what he’d done when he began to run in circles and then suddenly darted off towards the neighbor’s leaving the wrappings and an uneaten morsel on the ground. He then proceeded to beat up the neighbor’s dog (an older somewhat repressive little Samoyed), then came home, flopped himself down and immediately fell asleep.
By fall we were all indoors and ready for winter hibernation. This set the pattern for the next decade, hard physical labors in the spring, summer and fall followed by long winters of rest and relaxation.
The years blended together in this cycle of seasons. Lots of hiking, swimming, and exploring for all of us, but as Moon got older he also got bolder and would take off to run the hills with his canine companions for hours at a time. This was often embarrassing for us. We’d hear him yapping across the valley and then see him chasing deer with Osier. Once when hiking with him he took off after a coyote, chasing in it across a large open undulating plateau below us, barking on its tail the whole way. When they disappeared over the edge of the meadow a whole racket of coyote yells and yaps began, and soon Moonshadow was being chased back by a barking coyote on his tail.
Once Moon ate something that made him sick. We discovered him all stiff and wobbly and appearing to hallucinate. As we drove him to the vet’s office 40 miles away in town he sat in the front seat of the truck wide and wild eyed dodging imaginary objects. The vet asked us if he’d somehow gotten into LSD, and we laughed and told her we didn’t have any of that kind of stuff anymore. But we thought it possible that he had eaten an old dried toad (there were a lot of them flattened on the driveway that spring) and gotten bufo poisoning. She gave him some muscle relaxants which may have helped his anxiety some but made him look all the more ridiculous since he was clearly still hallucinating, but now without any muscle control.
One summer afternoon he returned home with his face completely covered in porcupine quills. For the next couple of hours I wrestled him in the dusty yard pulling them out one by one, first with a pair of pliers, and then my fingers when he got plier-shy, until finally for the last one stuck deeply in the end of his nose, I had to use my teeth. A couple of years later when he was stupid enough to do it again we just took him to the vet.
Another time he got hurt in a fight with a neighbor’s dog. Somehow he got caught up in the other dog’s chain and when he tried to get away a link of the chain snapped off his large lower canine tooth. There was a half inch long piece of nerve dangling from the stump, and so I called the vet to ask if he needed a root canal or something. She said, no just take a spoon and rub the nerve off, which I did, thinking it must have been horribly painful, but he didn’t seem to notice, and by that evening was gnawing on an old bone again.
One early spring day he had taken off with Juniper while Maile and I worked in the yard. We were a bit surprised when a truck drove up and our neighbor Little Wolf walked up carrying a lifeless looking Moonshadow. It turns out the two dogs had gotten thirsty while out exploring and chasing and had stopped for a drink at Little Wolf’s open shallow well. For something like an hour he had been in his house listening to a dog bark incessantly. When he finally went out to check what all the fuss was about he found Juniper running around the well hole barking while Moonshadow swam in circles trying to find a way up the steep sides. Moon was about on his last lap, and when Little Wolf carried him up to us his hypothermia was so bad he wasn’t even moving. It was a sunny day and so I took him in my lap up against the warm south side of the sauna, fed him some honey, and rubbed his fur with a towel. Only after about fifteen minutes of this did he begin to shiver violently.
One of the best things about living in the back hills is the space, privacy and solitude it provides. We had very few neighbors and they all had a very ‘live and let live’ attitude. Anyway, we only had them on one side so most of our outings were devoid of humans. One time I had taken the dogs with me as I went to meditate on the forested ridge about a mile from the house. I had been sitting for maybe half an hour with the dogs doing their thing around me when I noticed that both Moonshadow and Juniper were now sitting quietly very close in front of me looking very cowed and anxiously up the slope behind me. I looked around and saw a very large wolf-like dog sitting on a rocky ledge less than a hundred feet above us. It was dark grey and very calmly just watching us. I turned around to continue my practice and the dogs stayed close and quiet. When I eventually got up, the “wolf” was gone. I don’t really know if it was a wolf, maybe it was one that had wandered down from the wilds of British Columbia, but I’d also heard that someone in the adjacent valley had been raising wolf crosses and one had gotten away. I never felt in danger, and maybe it just wanted a pack to join, but what impressed me was how much my domestic canines respected the power of at least a semi-feral cousin, and how they thought that somehow I’d provide them with a refuge.
Such was the life of our Moonshadow on White Mountain.
Eventually Maile and I split up and Moon and Juniper went to live with her in Northern California. I never saw them again, but occasionally Maile would write a letter letting me know how they were doing. Moon’s sweet son and faithful companion Juniper eventually died of nose cancer after having an exceptionally playful and fun-filled life. Moon died too of course, and I don’t recall the cause or exactly when it was, but it was in old age and in the summer. I remember that because I’d had a particularly vivid and unusual dream where I was sitting on a throne like a Tibetan lama giving a teaching to Maile about how there is no such thing as death, and that it is all just an illusion. I found this a bit odd since by then I had long since quit considering myself a Buddhist, and Maile had gone on to become a lama herself. A couple of days later a letter from her arrived informing me that Moonshadow had recently died, and that since we’d been so close, and so bonded right from the beginning, she thought I’d want to know. I wrote her back letting her know I appreciated the news, but that I had let go of Moonshadow years before.
Sometimes the lives of humans and our dogs get wrapped up and folded into each other to the extent that we don’t know where one begins or the other ends. I guess you could say we merge, and this is the beauty of the love, loyalty, and companionship that dogs offer us.
I remember Moonshadow well, his escapades, his eyes, his wiggling sleek form, even that first glimpse of his little body sitting next to my feet on that Hawaiian sidewalk, and can see that as much as I’ve let go, he still holds a place in my heart.
(12/15/2015)
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