Nick's Page

Nick's Page

In Memoriam
Nicholas J. Bear

Nicholas was a coal black dog, with fur as thick as an Arctic bear’s. Right after he died, I dreamed of a huge white bear, a polar bear I thought, watching me. I remembered the Spirit Bears as I woke -- that cream-colored sub-species of brown bear living on a single island off the Canadian coast. A Spirit Bear. Surely this was Nick, coming as spirit, having left the smaller darker, more dense body of his earth-bound existence. Even as the dream tells me, his spirit lives on, it also lives on because he is remembered. I loved his spirit, but I also loved him as he was -- alive, that coal black dog who came out of nowhere into my life.

Nick’s ancestry was a mystery. California lab, they call our various black dogs that are clearly part lab, as he was, and who-knows-what-else. He could have been part husky, or part chow, or part malamute or part rottweiler, or some combination of several of these. I will never know. His origins were even more a mystery, since he was found running along the highway, had no collar, and was never claimed. He had belonged to someone who mistreated him. He had no experience with children, had never had a bath, was covered with so many fleas he scratched and whined all that first night. He had never eaten out of a bowl and had been encouraged to make a show of aggression with other dogs.

Although he never trusted strangers and growled if they looked him in the eye, he never bit anyone; and by the end of his life, he had so learned to trust that just two days before his death, when in the park he was set upon by a gaggle of children who arrived at a dead run (to “pet your dog” -- he was a magnet for kids), he stood perfectly still until he was surrounded, then slowly lifted his grizzled muzzle to lick the chin of the child who stood in front of him. I thought at the time that a small miracle had occurred, for he was a dog who was so frightened the first time a child approached us that he had crawled under the table at the outdoor café and tangled his leash around the pedestal in a quietly frantic effort to escape.

Nicholas J. Bear was his full name, not only because he brought a bear to mind; but because, as my friend said, he was ‘a being as big as a bear’ -- his heart was so big. ‘Heart,’ I used to say as I stroked his chest – because he was all heart, and because my own heart was so much his. Because he gave me heart. Because he was the heart of hope, the heart of loyalty (as dogs are said to be), the heart of acceptance and understanding. Because his heart was also wild and beyond my grasp, a heart that could be given (as hearts are) but not taken -- not taken for granted. A wise dog, a friend, a guide, a ferrier – he carried me from one long piece of my life over to another. We traveled between worlds together. He was good company. He was the best.

And so, when Nicholas, the great heart, died, it had to be for something, it could not go unmarked. He would have spoken for life, had he had words. He would have set up a barking to end all barking on behalf of a world of embodiment – a world of smells! a world of diversity, a world of multiplicity of species. On Nick’s behalf I want to set up a cacophony of yelps and barks – a great celebration of life, a racket of YES.

Yes for a sustainable world. Yes for the earth in all her shades and colors, all her sounds and smells and cascades of species. Yes for the living, breathing biosphere. Yes for the air and the water. Yes for the rich dark earth, for roots and worms, for mice and badgers, for skunks and weasels, for deer and coyotes and mountain lions and bobcats, for hawks and buzzards, for sparrows and orioles and finches and Canada geese, for herons and egrets and mud hens, for the creatures of earth and air, and water, too – for salmon and seals, otters and whales, halibut and cod and urchin. Let there be a great blessing upon all life, as Nicholas would have given it, with happy snorts and snuffles, nose to the air or the ground, with ecstatic barking, and deep dreaming at the end of the day.

As his bones now dream their way back into the earth, let his life give way to the life he loved. ‘May all this continue,’ he would sigh, as he sank into sleep.

elizabeth carothers herron
Telos Project