October 15
Plush leather loveseat. Complimentary Starbucks coffee. Free Wi-Fi access. Soft classical music. Wooden table to prop boots on. Yes, I do love Sheridan’s Holiday Inn. The reception desk and the coffee stand are manned – or womanned – by smiling women my age, and I’ve a warm place to write without paying a thing.
Chap and I just hunted in the Bighorn Mountains. At 7500 feet, I pulled Squatter off US 14 and into the snow, engaged four wheel drive and lurched down two muddy ruts until I came to a meadow. The temperature was below freezing. I parked the truck, drew my shotgun from the back seat and clipped a bell to Chap’s collar. He awakened from his nap like I’d shocked him with a taiser. “Stay,” I told him, and he churned the cloth of the passenger’s seat with his paws as I stepped back into the snow. He eyed my shotgun and orange cap, smelled my bird hunting vest. His bell jingled as he jittered in the seat. The snow had fallen in the morning, and now the uppermost layer crunched underfoot. I slipped shells into my shotgun. “Stay,” I said.
When poodles were respectable and Abercrombie and Fitch sold truck parts, Steinbeck undertook a trip like mine. It produced the book Travels with Charley, published in 1963. Charley was a French poodle who sat almost as tall as his master. He and Steinbeck traveled The States in a truck called Rocinante, which, as Steinbeck gently reminds his reader, was the name of Don Quixote’s horse. Steinbeck mused about traveling alone. When you’re by yourself, he wrote, time runs together. Past, present and future fuse into one. Only social interaction fixes us in time and space.
“You ready to find birds?” I ask Chap. The question is rhetorical, and Chap declines to answer. I snap my shotgun shut. “Okay!” I say as I slap my thigh. Chap leaps from the truck and lands four feet away in the snow. It is four inches thick in places, which is to say it comes about a third of the way up Chap’s legs. In a flurry of white he pivots and faces me. I point to the east, along the edge of the meadow where the dark firs encroach upon the white meadow. Chap sprints for the trees and I walk briskly along the forest’s edge. The air is cold and fresh, stinging my cheeks like a pinch from a loved one.
Steinbeck considered himself alone when he and Charley drove between towns. I consider myself in company when I’m with Chap. I guess that’s because for Steinbeck, Charley filled the companionship space previously occupied by his wife, whereas I was Squatter’s lone inhabitant before Chap. Exchanging his wife’s company for that of his dog thinned Steinbeck’s social landscape. For me Chap fills a void. But Steinbeck knew what it was like to be utterly alone. As a young man he lived alone for eight months at a stretch, tending to a summer home in the mountains that became snowed in during the winter. He wrote that, after a time, the complex emotional reactions normally felt by humans in interactive contexts ceased because there was no one around. A “reversion to pleasure-pain,” he called it. I wonder why he felt that way.
Chap is as excited as a puppy. I haven’t seen him like this since Dad left. He leaps high over logs with his front legs folded like a deer. He charges through the woods at full speed, a brown and white streak weaving through the tree trunks of a white-floored forest. He plants a forefoot and cuts like a halfback with four legs. He sprints for the meadow. Reaching it, he turns again for the trees. Chap is working the edge of the field, showing the wisdom of his age. Though he has never hunted blue grouse he knows from six years of experience that upland birds thrive on the edges. Upland birds are Chap’s business.
I think the complex emotions Steinbeck wrote about are not simple gradations on a continuum of emotion, as in happy vs. elated vs. ecstatic, etc. I think the complexities of the human subconscious grow from tensions between concurrent codes of behavior. In a social situation one must simultaneously consider the personal, perceived and moral repercussions of any action. At a dinner party, for instance, a self-deprecating comment may make you feel better personally but cause others to think you diffident. It may simultaneously make a listener feel better about a mistake he regrets, thereby affecting a moral good. Often our codes of behavior conflict in this way, and our complex emotions arise from the resultant discordances. Complex emotions grow from edges, if you will. But when you’re alone you don’t need these multiple codes, so they melt away. Evaluating an action is simpler. The solo traveler needs only a single, cruder standard of behavior: pleasure-pain.
Chap and I hunt the edge all the way around the meadow. On the western side the edge climbs a hill, and I push myself up it to keep pace with Chap. He has barely slowed. The intoxicatingly fresh air hampers me now, and I breathe plumes of water vapor as I gasp and exhale. I stop at the top of the hill and look for Chap. On the northern edge of the field he flits between trees, working back toward the truck. Dusk is falling. In the sky isolated clouds, remnants of the morning’s front, darken to purple as orange rays radiate from the west. The cold air feels good and I loosen a button on my shirtfront.
I do not find my emotional life steadier when I’m on the road. It becomes more complex, more forceful. The rearview mirror hangs in my face and there is nothing to distract me from me. Emotions sweep through the cab of my truck like ocean waves sweep through a clam’s world, each wave eradicating the traces of the wave that came before. In this environment Chap is the coral to which I hold. He situates me in time and space. Chap must be fed, exercised, hunted and disciplined. He gives me footing from which to fight back memories and repulse anxieties.
Back at Squatter I call Chap to me. I remove his bell. We haven’t found birds, but both of us are glad we hunted. I rub his back and he pants visibly in the cooling air. It is still light enough to see, so I retrieve Chap’s ball from the truck. Chap wags his stubby tail and bounces on his front feet. I throw the ball and he bounds after it, ecstatic that the fun hasn’t ended. From ten feet he smells the ball, then he digs it out of the snow. I shout encouragement. When he brings it back I pet him and throw the ball again.
Chap and I just hunted in the Bighorn Mountains. At 7500 feet, I pulled Squatter off US 14 and into the snow, engaged four wheel drive and lurched down two muddy ruts until I came to a meadow. The temperature was below freezing. I parked the truck, drew my shotgun from the back seat and clipped a bell to Chap’s collar. He awakened from his nap like I’d shocked him with a taiser. “Stay,” I told him, and he churned the cloth of the passenger’s seat with his paws as I stepped back into the snow. He eyed my shotgun and orange cap, smelled my bird hunting vest. His bell jingled as he jittered in the seat. The snow had fallen in the morning, and now the uppermost layer crunched underfoot. I slipped shells into my shotgun. “Stay,” I said.
When poodles were respectable and Abercrombie and Fitch sold truck parts, Steinbeck undertook a trip like mine. It produced the book Travels with Charley, published in 1963. Charley was a French poodle who sat almost as tall as his master. He and Steinbeck traveled The States in a truck called Rocinante, which, as Steinbeck gently reminds his reader, was the name of Don Quixote’s horse. Steinbeck mused about traveling alone. When you’re by yourself, he wrote, time runs together. Past, present and future fuse into one. Only social interaction fixes us in time and space.
“You ready to find birds?” I ask Chap. The question is rhetorical, and Chap declines to answer. I snap my shotgun shut. “Okay!” I say as I slap my thigh. Chap leaps from the truck and lands four feet away in the snow. It is four inches thick in places, which is to say it comes about a third of the way up Chap’s legs. In a flurry of white he pivots and faces me. I point to the east, along the edge of the meadow where the dark firs encroach upon the white meadow. Chap sprints for the trees and I walk briskly along the forest’s edge. The air is cold and fresh, stinging my cheeks like a pinch from a loved one.
Steinbeck considered himself alone when he and Charley drove between towns. I consider myself in company when I’m with Chap. I guess that’s because for Steinbeck, Charley filled the companionship space previously occupied by his wife, whereas I was Squatter’s lone inhabitant before Chap. Exchanging his wife’s company for that of his dog thinned Steinbeck’s social landscape. For me Chap fills a void. But Steinbeck knew what it was like to be utterly alone. As a young man he lived alone for eight months at a stretch, tending to a summer home in the mountains that became snowed in during the winter. He wrote that, after a time, the complex emotional reactions normally felt by humans in interactive contexts ceased because there was no one around. A “reversion to pleasure-pain,” he called it. I wonder why he felt that way.
Chap is as excited as a puppy. I haven’t seen him like this since Dad left. He leaps high over logs with his front legs folded like a deer. He charges through the woods at full speed, a brown and white streak weaving through the tree trunks of a white-floored forest. He plants a forefoot and cuts like a halfback with four legs. He sprints for the meadow. Reaching it, he turns again for the trees. Chap is working the edge of the field, showing the wisdom of his age. Though he has never hunted blue grouse he knows from six years of experience that upland birds thrive on the edges. Upland birds are Chap’s business.
I think the complex emotions Steinbeck wrote about are not simple gradations on a continuum of emotion, as in happy vs. elated vs. ecstatic, etc. I think the complexities of the human subconscious grow from tensions between concurrent codes of behavior. In a social situation one must simultaneously consider the personal, perceived and moral repercussions of any action. At a dinner party, for instance, a self-deprecating comment may make you feel better personally but cause others to think you diffident. It may simultaneously make a listener feel better about a mistake he regrets, thereby affecting a moral good. Often our codes of behavior conflict in this way, and our complex emotions arise from the resultant discordances. Complex emotions grow from edges, if you will. But when you’re alone you don’t need these multiple codes, so they melt away. Evaluating an action is simpler. The solo traveler needs only a single, cruder standard of behavior: pleasure-pain.
Chap and I hunt the edge all the way around the meadow. On the western side the edge climbs a hill, and I push myself up it to keep pace with Chap. He has barely slowed. The intoxicatingly fresh air hampers me now, and I breathe plumes of water vapor as I gasp and exhale. I stop at the top of the hill and look for Chap. On the northern edge of the field he flits between trees, working back toward the truck. Dusk is falling. In the sky isolated clouds, remnants of the morning’s front, darken to purple as orange rays radiate from the west. The cold air feels good and I loosen a button on my shirtfront.
I do not find my emotional life steadier when I’m on the road. It becomes more complex, more forceful. The rearview mirror hangs in my face and there is nothing to distract me from me. Emotions sweep through the cab of my truck like ocean waves sweep through a clam’s world, each wave eradicating the traces of the wave that came before. In this environment Chap is the coral to which I hold. He situates me in time and space. Chap must be fed, exercised, hunted and disciplined. He gives me footing from which to fight back memories and repulse anxieties.
Back at Squatter I call Chap to me. I remove his bell. We haven’t found birds, but both of us are glad we hunted. I rub his back and he pants visibly in the cooling air. It is still light enough to see, so I retrieve Chap’s ball from the truck. Chap wags his stubby tail and bounces on his front feet. I throw the ball and he bounds after it, ecstatic that the fun hasn’t ended. From ten feet he smells the ball, then he digs it out of the snow. I shout encouragement. When he brings it back I pet him and throw the ball again.
posted by Jeb Butler at 11:33 AM
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