(Monday, September 30, 2013) I’m on a circular-shaped island with coworkers. The island is the high ground left after a flash flood. We discover that the flood waters are so salty that we can bob on the surface as though swimming in the Great Salt Lake. It’s impossible to drown, which thrills Larry McGowan as he is not physically fit. And anyway, the water is quite shallow. We head out to swim and play and explore.
I paddle westward, and am horrified to discover beneath the clear water hundreds of dead animals: sweet, tiny dogs who were trapped by their leashes and unable to flee to safety. I’m anguished by the fact that humans have caused this great loss of innocent life.
Day notes:
When we began driving out of the Rapid City blizzard on Sunday afternoon, the ditches were lined with dead cattle. It turns out ranchers lost between 20% and 90% of their herds. Animals were still dying of pneumonia days later. When we arrived in the Black Hills I remember thinking that the pastures dotted with hybrid varieties of beef cattle should have been full of bison instead. So in that way, the hybrid small dogs, so far removed from wolves because of genetic manipulation by humans, are very much like the cattle. The human interference in their genetics and environment doomed them in the storm.
The coworkers in my dream are the people I snowshoe with in the winter.
(Friday, October 11, 2013) Louis Hall called to say that Larry McGowan died on the way to work this morning. He didn’t have many details. Larry had a medical emergency, maybe a stroke or heart attack, and crashed his car. He was the same age as I am, 56. In my morning tarot meditation, I drew the four of cups: “sorrow.” Great Salt Lake: tears, mourning?