July 24 is a bitter sweet memory here at the Dog House, that being the day in 1993 that I made the dreadful decision to put Dominoe to sleep, the faithful dog who traveled cross country with me form Baltimore to Phoenix, who tagged along on my excursions up and down the west, and whose story became the core of 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story.
That photo above is so typical of her somber reflective pose, but do not think she was always so stately, I have a lot of her playing, chewing, and wagging her wiry tail (before 1989 when she whacked it too hard against a fence in New Mexcio and it ended up being docked because it would not stop bleeding, but that is a later story).
I have a collection of scanned photos from which I can pull from each year that will be new to the web. This one is from May 1987 as is the one below, when we did our first dreass rehearsal for camping before I left the east coast:
There is the first tent I ever owned, the green Eureka I ordered from LL Bean. This is in Catoctin National Park, the same place the fall before where Dominoe had become lost and found me. It was somewhere on those rocks that we both heard a sound we never heard before, but somehow we both knew instinctively to get away from – a rattlesnake. This Maryland snake maybe a kin of ones we’d shy away from out in the desert.
And picture number 3 is rather special too, this taken in Jacksonville, Florida (I did not take a direct route to Arizona) where I visited by cousins- Zack here is just a little kid, who later would grow up to be a soldier in Iraq, someone I would get to see get married in 2006, and currently a policeman in California.
It is kind of ironic to be thinking of that 1987 trip during my 2011 road trip… here I have been saying I have never done a long road trip, but darn if I did do something like it 24 years ago- taking my time, driving across the country, visiting friends and family, taking photos. Heck, I have the same guitar in my truck that was in the back seat of my 1973 Ford Maverick. The only thing I did not have then was my computer, mobile phone, and the much better camping equipment I have now. I also have less hair and more weight. Oh well.
What I don’t have of course is Dominoe, but 18 years later she lives on in her story. Sweet dreams, Dommy, I am thinking of you.
It’s always spooky when the patterns emerge out of forgotten memories. Thanks for a beautiful post. Heck–they’re all beautiful. You’re on this odyssey for me too, brother.
Something about big major trips like that sends you back. In 1989 I did a road trip by train (I had an ‘all-you-can-ride’ pass. I meandered my way across the country and back with no fixed schedule. 20 years later I was thinking about it and posted my rambling aimless journal here: http://www.downes.ca/post/53383