Red is a beautiful dog and an extraordinary companion for me. I have never had a dog loved so much by other people, I sometimes think my work should be driving him around to people who need to be uplifted. He loves going with me into the deep woods, and sometimes it is just him and me, Maria and Fate are working her studio or buys. He will sometimes walk a few steps ahead of me, and then turn and wait for me. He never lets me out of his sight, or fails to know where I am. Today, there was something spiritual about our walk together, the way the light hit him, the way the sun backlit the forest, and created a canvas behind him.

Two men getting up there, I told him this morning, he seemed to smile and shake it off.

Red is one of those dogs that are spirit dogs, animals who mark the passages of our life, who come with a purpose, and leave when their work is done. Red is graying a bit, he is slowing down a bit, I can tell his legs hurt him sometimes after a long run. One day in the not too distant future, hopefully years away, he will join the other spirit dogs in my life, dogs that have supported me, given me so much strength and life,shaped so much of my writing.

I will never despoil their memory by lamenting their loss, they brought nothing but joy and love to me.

In the meantime, we walk through life together. The good in Red is divine, limitless. This morning, before walking in the woods I read from the writings of a brilliant and forgotten mystic, and thought of the woods and the trees.

“The greater you are,” he said, “the more you need to search for yourself. Your deep soul hides itself from consciousness. So you need to increase aloneness, elevation of thinking, penetration of thought, liberation of mind – until finally your soul reveals itself to  you, spangling a few sparkles of her lights.”

I love that the soul is seen as a part of the feminine divine. Red and I love women.