A brush with the spiritual

Freshly made waffles topped with cherries, hot hashbrowns sizzling off the grill, salted and peppered, strong black coffee. All the ingredients of a perfect Saturday morning were in play, when one thing went very, dangerously, wrong.

Skye was missing. She wasn't at our feet looking for handouts, she wasn't playing with the cat, or on her porch, or anywhere in the field. She didn't respond to our whistles and claps, she didn't come bounding out of a neighbor's yard to our increasingly frantic calls.

On this sloping prairie of ours, five acres of garden and overgrown wheat field roll down the far-off bank into thickly wooded forest. In Spring and Fall the elk herd come through. We've seen moose trot past our flower garden and disappear into the brush three times. And twice, coyotes have grabbed our Shelties by their throats and hauled them into the field and tore out their guts there.

When Skye didn't come, we knew what had happened. April, not winter, is when coyotes are hungriest, because they have pups to feed. Mom recalled seeing a coyote far down in the field every morning for the past week.

Tearing off pajama pants and sweatshirts we silently and swiftly dressed for the rain and each of us wordlessly split off in three directions. No longer calling. Hoping to find what was left of her.
I walked first to the end of our road past the neighbor dogs she sometimes visits. No trace.

I came back through our field deeper into the tall grass, pushing against my thighs, the damp smell of decaying organic matter heavy in the air-- last year's leaves, veined on their white leperous bellies, sodden as newspaper.

I caught a glimpse of Mom standing at the edge of our steep bank that falls into forest, and fifty feet beyond her, with a pair of field glasses that saw everything and nothing, my Dad. We all stood in our separate worlds with our backs to the house, now football fields away, gazing into the quiet green canyon. Down there is where the elk, deer, and coyotes come from. Down there.

I followed a deer trail and went slipping down in my blue converse, soaked with the wet grass making the white toes bone-colored.

Past cobwebs over hollows in the mossy earth, sparkling with raindrops, rotting stumps broken apart and scattered red, fallen trees rubbed to a high polish from antlers, the odd hoofprint, masses of decomposing leaves, waxy yellow swampflowers, briars.

Picking trails through the underbrush, stopping every now and again to listen, my head on a swivel, looking for a sign--blood, hair, who knows? All silent. The plopping of water drops off of high branches, evergreens swaying, birdsong.

I don't like burials at sea. There's no evidence. What would we bury? How do we know she's not alive but injured somewhere? Other dogs in the neighborhood have eventually fought free and came limping and bloodied home. She's not a fighter though; I can see her, crouched back on her haunches, hackles raised, lips curled, ears flattened to her head in fear, tail curled up and trembling. A leap, fangs in the throat, and it's over.

There's a skeleton in the path in front of me. Not hers, something dead for weeks, an animal like a badger, or a mole, something with long claws for digging and flap of skin pulled over the skull, the hair gray and coarse, it's little spine picked clean and twisted in a curl.

When God told King Saul to kill the Amalekites, and let not his eye pity them, he didn't. He spared "the best," the fairest of the people, the best of the oxen, cattle, livestock. We may have seen mercy, but on the battlefield near Gilboa where Saul and his son were killed, it was at the hands of an Amalekite mercenary. The lesson being, Don't leave your enemies alive.

Have we allowed the coyotes to live? We sighted in the gun, we baited them, we called the experts, we thought we were doing a pretty good job; but we didn't do our all. We didn't don camoflauge and hunt them thirty days straight with a trained hunting dog, we didn't call the exterminators, when they killed our last two pets we didn't find their dens and ram dynamite down it. We failed.

Two hours later I'm soaked and heading back out of the forest. My socks are gummy with rain inside my shoes, like liquid slippers. My jeans making hollow sucking noises over the grass. Rain mixed with unseasonable April snow drives into my face, behind my glasses. I'm shivering uncontrollably.

In our backyard there are prints. Coyotes, ten feet or less from the dogdoor. Wide paws, long claws. And scat. Left in jeering derision on our porch. Mom sits in a lawnchair, sleet blowing by her sideways, tears quietly streaming down her face. Dad finds more tracks and narrates, sniffing away angry tears:

"Good God, here are the tracks....big ones....look at the size of those claws!...and the pads. Skye doesn't have feet like that. Here's her print: back towards the house and dug in. Here's theirs....hiding by the bank? Moving fast. And here.....God he's big! Heavy! Sunk in. Maybe because he's carrying something....."

I go inside, strip off each muddy, sopping article of clothing, return to my pajamas and lay down. I can't feel much. My feet are numb and I turn on my electric blanket. My hands are so cold I can't bear to touch them, and shove them under a pillow, wrap them in my comforter. I think about the night my Jonesy died and how I cried till I thought I would break for grief. I haven't cried yet over Skye.

Mom is downstairs on the couch and softly singing "When dark trials come and my heart is filled with the weight of doubt I will praise Him still..."

And we hear a bark.

She was locked in the guest room next to mine, and never made a sound. I let her out and she fled down the stairs to Mom and Dad, who fell to their knees in overwhelmed emotion, Mom sobbing uncontrollably as Skye licked her face. "I feel like I'm seeing Lazarus!" Mom cries.

Lazarus. I read that just this morning, before breakfast, before anything happened...had a cup of coffee and randomly opened my Bible to wherever it fell open, and it happened to fall on the story of Lazarus. Coincidence?

Here are the things that make this miraculous....

1. The guest room has been closed up for two weeks. There's no entrance to it from my room either, the doors are locked and we keep them closed unless we need them so the heat goes to the other rooms. How did she get in there?

2. In spite of our calling, whistling, loud and frantic insistent calling, clapping and all manner of cajoling, she never made a sound, not a whimper, not a scratch at the door, for hours.

3. We heard the bark as soon as Mom finished that song--the song that had been given to her when she asked "What are we supposed to learn from this? There must be some higher lesson, we're not just cursed...." Praise Him. And she did, through her tears.

4. Lazarus? I mean, come on! I'm not making this up!

Guard what you treasure. Leave nothing undone that could cause you future grief. Don't leave enemies alive. Have no reason to feel regret.

Stolen pint glasses in London

My day began with an abysmal yet typical hostel breakfast of instant Nescafe and white toast smothered in margarine, but quickly improved. I walked to Trafalgar square to squander my salary at the gift shop of the National Gallery, before paying homage to my favorite paintings in the world-- Whistlejacket, burnished in copper and ready to fly, by George C Stubbs; the Fighting Temeraire by English genius Turner, the copper rays of the sun dying into the gray water he left so lifelike with his last brushstroke; a vase of sunflowers by--who else?--Van Gogh; and let's not forget the deeply moving spectre of 17-year old Lady Jane Grey's last few moments on earth, as she was guided by a silent, sympathetic witness to the block on which she was beheaded in the Tower of London.

A quick coffee and bottle of sparkling water infused with ginger and lime made up for breakfast, and I danced across the street to St. Martin in the Field's for their lunch concert.
The concert featured the young and talented pianist, only 18, if that, and named at age 11 England's Best Young Musician. After a concert of Bach and Vivaldi echoing among that oldest and best beloved church--whose free lunchtime concerts have become tradition since WW2--I tubed over to St Paul's.

St Paul's, considered architecht Christopher Wren's masterpiece and everlasting monument, was only his 3rd structure ever built--his first structure being a doorway. Yes, a doorway.
St Paul's is unparalleled in magnificence, the most beautiful church in England if not Europe with its golden dome and pure, clear windows letting the natural light of the country stream through. Interestingly enough, St Paul's was built over the temple the Roman legion first erected upon founding ancient London, a temple to the goddess Diana. Fast-forward to this same site, that of St Paul's, site also to the wedding of the 20th century, that of Diana to Charles, and eerie hairs raise on the back of your neck.

I climbed the 530 steps to the top of the Golden Dome for an incredible view of London new and old--thanks in part to a very old rule stipulating that no structure can be taller than the cross cresting St Pauls. I see the Thames stretched out like a silver banner, glinting exactly like Turner might paint it, Parliament hazy in the distance, a threat of rain the silver sky. The climb--and the view--are equally breathtaking.

Once St Paul closed I trotted over the bridge to the Tate Modern Museum. But before entering, 1pound for a bag of fresh honey roasted peanuts. I took a seat in the only place possible, on a long public bench in front of the Tate Modern next to a little old man. Around us swarmed a field trip's worth of young students chattering in a language I still can't place--but all their backpacks were Jansport, their shoes Converse, and their leader wore cowboy boots. Still, I had no idea where they hailed from.

After the young field trippers departed, I was on the verge of offering the elder gent next to me some of my peanuts when his family, apparently, arrived, and said in German tones what could only be interpreted via their smiling winking faces and coy tones as "Oh, you got yourself a girlfriend, did you?" he laughingly stood and joined the impeccably dressed trio, an older woman and two young men, and they sauntered off together, reunited. A dozen paces away, he looked back and smiled at me, and I smiled in return.

"The Capuchins drink poorly,
The Benedictines drink deeply,
The Dominicans drink jar to jar,
And the Franciscans drink the cellar dry!"

Or so went the ancient adage that opened my pub crawl, led by, of all things, an American. "The dipthongs are chewy, the accent is American," he said by way of apology. "All I can say to whoever is British, is that you knew it would happen to you sooner or later!" And away he led us, in a fedora, oil-skin duster, and a rainbow striped scarf the very match of my favorite pair of knee socks.

Away we went along the Thames, learning interesting facts such as the Blackfriars bridge girders are festooned with saltwater fish statuettes on one side, and freshwater fish on on the other--and this is accurate, given that the Thames is tidal, receding 12 miles a day and then flowing back 9 miles. A cork, dropped into the Thames near Blackfriars, would take 2 and a half weeks to flow to the sea at that rate. And he (David) threw a cork in for good measure to illustrate his point.

From there we trod o'er the "wilbbly-wobbly" as it's known, or the Milennium Bridge--the first bridge built over the Thames since Victorian times. It's a marvel of engineering, being a suspension bridge solely for pedestrians, and thus the suspensions run in gentle swoops, making the entire bridge resemble a brachiosaurus' backbone from a distance. On the bridge itself, the walkway is a smooth steel ribcage like a dragon's belly, and the burnished handrails are so low, I can picture myself slipping a leg right over them, pivoting on my hips to walk away from the footbridge onto the griders, and subsequently throw myself into the olivine murky waters.

Tempting....but no.

The Thames, by the way, is reputedly the cleanest urban river in all of Europe. Once polluted, it now hosts over 120 species of fish including dolphin and salmon, and over 200 species of plants. It's murky character is due to its tides, which cause the river to gain 4' in height and ove 300' meters in horizontal length in places (forgive me for my cross-metric distances!). Put a glass of Thames water on a mantlepiece for fifteen minutes or so, and the silt will settle, leaving pure, drinkable, tap equivalent water. (Try not to imagine it recycling through an average of 7 Brits before reaching this point in London, however--by far a less savory factoid.)

We find our first pub--Young's. Young's has been a brewer for hundreds of years, as only a famous brewer can. We stop in to the Young's Arms, which our guide calls the best modern pub in all of England. I try the "special special," called the St George, a version of their popular bitter. It's flat and room temperature--which is a good thing!--and I taste the wood of the casks and a faint apple tang. "It takes 10 years to aquire the taste," says David, and I can rather see why. Tasty, but without the marrow I love about a good, dark stout. We drain our pints (I nick mine, dropping it into my bag) and continue on.

We pass the Borough--the moniker of one of London's most popular food and fish markets, leftover since the Anglo Saxens staved off the Vikings, and long before the Norman conquest. Around 900 AD this whole city was called Londonburgh, or London-burough, meaning "the fortified place," referring to the walls left by the evacuated Romans.

(Rome, by the way, built Londinium on the Thames exactly in the same situation as Rome is built over its own river, and, in an ancient miracle, supplied Rome with 300 gallons per capita, whereas modern London struggles to dole out some 30 gallons per capita today.)

The second pub is the Market Porter, but sadly, they're all out of porter.

"Fancy a Guinness, Wonda?" I ask myself.
"Owright," I reply to me.

And down the hatch.

We move on, but not before an anecdote. And in fact, at the beginning of the tour, David fairly warned us, "You'll get from me some history, some biology, some biography, some architectural notes on the pubs themselves, as well as recommendations on favorite tipples--and to be frank, after a jar or two, an anecdote may also come your way." And so it does, as, outside of the Market Porter, we discover we 30 some people on the drinking tour are from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, England, America, & Norway. The ancedote, which toast our jail-bait brethren goes,

"The Scottish drink their whisky neat,
The Irish drink it hot.
The Aussies have no national drink,
So they drink the ruddy lot!"
And away we go again.

We finish out the night at the George's Inn, the only surviving coach inn in England, with it's coach lights and rooms above the pub, over 330 years old and frequented by the likes of Shakespeare in it's day. Another pint and some chewing the fat with my New Zealand friends (urban planners working in London for the time being as it turns out) and then I head home, blearily, on the tube, another nicked pint in my bag. "I'm tipsy," I think to myself, counting up 4 pints downed and no dinner. "You're tipsy," I say out loud to myself in stern parental tones, clutching onto the railing of the long escalator down to the Jubilee line.

And so to bed.

Winning Awards in London

I went for a long walk around Piccadilly and Leicester, gawking at the ticket hawkers and the strange juxtaposition of Angus steakhouses and Starbucks with English street sweepers and constabulary, or those amazingly definitive crosswalks with bold LOOK LEFT! painted on the ground, because not even the natives know which way in hell traffic goes.
I finally got into my room and met a pair of gents I'll call Hans and Frans...two older Frenchies travelling about Europe and in London for just four days. "This, how you say {mumbles in French} ah, "afternoon," we go to TRAFF-algur."

"Trafalgar?" I ask from my top bunk, where I'm untangling power cords to charge my phone and camera.

They nod and bob excitedly now that we've made communication, "Yes! Traaaafulgr."

Ah.

I take a 45 minute nap and wakeup in time to get pretty before heading to the tube--Piccadilly to Vicotria to Central to St James Park tube stop. And then all hell breaks loose. I can't seem to get my bearings for whatever reason--the new construction that completely obscures the park from the tube stop, the maze of roads, my faulty memory. I start asking directions to the park and everyone gives me a different direction, indicated by a jutting index finger and a jowl-full of heavily accented "righ', an' then, straight froo, righ'!"

I pass a pair of construction workers who stop to watch me float by in my giant fluffy aqua skirt. I can't find a damn thing and time is running out. I don't exactly feel like running because I'd then be running in an unknown direction instead of sauntering like I know what the hell I'm doing. I ask some ladies on the street which way to St James Palace itslef, and they coo together like puzzled doves before pointing me back in the direction I've just come. I pass the construction workers again--this time they take a break and sit on the street to watch me go by, only now, I'm doing a half-jog-skip type of step that's just my normal walk with a little dash of panic.

Between these blacks and browns and the rare sari, I am the only splash of color on the street. My long black wool jacket billows, exposing white ankles and a beaming turquoise skirt of so much material, it took up half of my suitcase.

By the time I even find St James' Park I'm thoroughly confused and start half-dashing through the Birdcage Walk between the geese and swans, and the squirrels posing for pictures between the crocus. It's so pretty I want to sit down and drink it in, but I check my cell phone and I've only got 15 more minutes. I make it to Whitehall where the famous horse guards are and, panting, lay out my invitation on the desk of a security guard. "How do I get here?!" I ask in desperation.

It's exactly 4 o'clock, the starting time of the ceremony, and I have no idea where to go. The guard points me way up the street, a three long city blocks. No one recognizes the name of the street I'm meant to find (Marlborough, in fact, one lady thinks it's up in Piccadilly), and everyone has a vagueish idea of where it is. I set off again, wind whipping my skirt and the tails of my coat like a giant blue poppy in a sea of penguins. It's now 4:15p and I'm beginning to realize that I've flown all the way from America just to miss my own ceremony.
I find Marlborough by sheer chance, and suddenly see the side of the Palace where I'm meant to be--I know this because a group of signs reading Duke of Edinburgh Award, that presumably used to be out front, are now huddled together in an alcove. There are five doors and I run between them all, ringing every buzzer. I even pound on the door and shout HELLOOOO! like I'm in a tragic movie and I'm the fair and desperate heroine.

Whatever works, right?

Through the lace curtains on the last door I see the steward come trotting down the long hall. He opens the door and I fall inside, shoving my two forms of identification and my official invitation into his hands and saying over and over "Can you help me? Can you help me?" He takes them all and makes me sit down. "The first thing you need to do is take a biiiig breath!" he says, and I"m suddenly so glad I"m in English hands. Looking at my invitation, he clucks his tongue and says, "Though we might not be able to get you in at this point."

I burst into tears. For me, that means my eyes welled up and my little mouth turns into a hard upside down smile to keep from bawling. It must have worked, because a few minutes later I had my coat and bag checked and was strolling through state rooms with the steward. "A few extra minutes won't hurt now. Just relax the body, and breathe. That's it."

They let me into a jaw-dropping room decorated with red textured fabric like silk, three stories high and jammed with whale-size paintings, dark and rich with age. Two garganutan chandeliers sag from the cieiling under their own double-decker weight of gilt and crystal. I take a seat, a blue thumbprint among the more respectably attired smudges.

All the recipients are on one side of the room; the mothers are on the other. The occasional father, but mostly mothers, mothers in suit coats, tulle hats and feathers, obese mothers, tiny well preserved mothers in sensible pumps.

There's a rousing speech reminding us why we're here. "We can do anything." And the speaker, herself a Gold Award recipient back in the day, urges us to go forth and make the world better, for ourselves and for others.

The Marshall organizes us into little clusters to get ready to meet HRH the Duke of Edinburgh. A breath later, the man himself enters the room with very little fanfare and no pomp. He stands in the middle our semi-circle, the Queen's husband, the man who was almost king, and jokingly asks us how many blisters we got on our Expeditions, and if we all went to church regularly.
He's not too tall, 5'7", slight and dressed in neat brown tweeds, graying and slightly stooped, with a quiet gravelly voice you'd want to hear, not unlike John Gielgud, or a posh Albert to Mister Wayne, a kind, refined voice that insitgates peals of laughter as he moves among the young people, congratulating them, meeting their eyes.

A moment after he's gone, people relax and realize that A. I'm American and B. I don't have a mother in a hat across the room. I've also missed the presentation of the awards themselves by the keynote speaker. Suddenly the Marshall, a little old woman with cankles and a happy face, takes my hand and pulls me to the front of the long, red hall, and there's an announcement that the late member attending the Duke of Edinburgh Award had a reason, to be late: she flew in this very morning, just for this ceremony. There's a murmur and a flurry, and I'm being beckoned all the way down the hall between the other Gold Award recipients on my left and their mothers on my right, to receive my award. The start applauding, and clap all the way as I walk, blue skirt swirling over the red carpet, and it thunders on as I shake hands with the keynote speaker and accept my certificate.

Slipping back into my seat, the Marshall squeezes my hand and whispers, "Now that made it worth it, didn't it?"

After, I had pictures taken with a bunch of the kids since I was now a minor celebrity, and was invited to the pub for pints, and all the mothers bought me Guinness, until, several pints later and lots of pictures and email swapping and looking at photos on each other's phones of sisters, dogs, boyfriends and grans, I excuse myself and run to see Mary Poppins.

I'm late for that, too, but as they sing Chim Chiminee Chim Chiminee, and dance in front of a set filled with the London skyline and bright stars, I well up again. Just. So happy. All of it. So beautiful.

These happy songs, these hardworking people, my new girlfriends in the pub, my proud family, this certificate safe on my lap that was years in the making.

And I fall in love with London all over again....or maybe just life.
Cheeree, chim, cheroo.
11:31pm here. Goodnight!