I’ve been on vacation in the desert. I went there to see my family. I love seeing my family and this was an especially joyous occasion, but what I actually want to write about is how my dog almost starved to death. She didn’t almost starve while I was on vacation. She ate things like fresh buffalo in giblet sauce while I was on vacation. The time she almost starved was when she lived in the desert, before I knew her, before maybe anyone knew her. I suspect she had a dog mother and dog litter mates, but I don’t know. She does look a little like E.T. A space ship might have crashed in that Arizona wilderness. For the record, she would still be a dog on her home planet, with dog-level brain power, except her owner would be a rubbery looking alien instead of me. She hasn’t exactly been building the return-pod the whole time she’s been here on Earth.
While I was in Arizona I kept thinking two things: one, how my dog’s fur is the exact color of this landscape (dun), and two: HOT. Then we got home and I watched the desert episode of Planet Earth about the poor kangaroos who only survive the midday heat by cringing in the shade and licking their forearms. All of this got me thinking about what it means to be from a place that is always trying to kill you. What would it be like to live in an environment so hostile that even your bizarre, precise adaptations fail to protect you? David Attenborough told us that if the kangaroos don’t make it to the shade in time they just fall down dead from heatstroke. I kept thinking, why don’t they move? I mean, why don’t they pack up their pouches and hop off to a verdant plain somewhere? Ok, that’s dumb, but it does make you wonder about habit, and habituation, and why it’s easier to do the same, incredibly difficult thing over and over than it is to do something new, the difficulties and pleasures of which are unknown. And even when you do move, the new place only ever exists in some uneasy relation to the old: It’s hotter/colder/tackier/cozier/lonelier/more unreal here than there, or there than here. I guess I’m reminded these days of something I’ve known for a long time, which is how much easier it is to suffer than to change.
Unless you’re Truckstop. She survived the ride through space. She survived the crash landing. She survived the desert and the truck stop, though barely, and only by swallowing dirt. She survived transplantation to this city of ocean and fog, and grew back all her fur. She does not participate in fatalistic arm licking, air-conditioner blasting, or complaining. Take that, tourist-self. Take that, hoppers.
