Koven is Two

Howling in the Wellsvilles last spring

 

Fall at the Devil's Staircase

Spring Break on the Pacific Coast

N. Bill Canyon

San Juan River

So glad Koven was born; so grateful we're together. He makes me smile daily--the translation of dog joy to me joy. He makes me keep the "always come back" contract. Today we ran in the hills above the Truckee. Yesterday, we experienced sun and shade with cranes and snow geese and meadowlarks (and a dead coyote, because it was Easter, and beetles were working on resurrection). Tomorrow? Anything, so long as we participate in it together. Happy birthday, Puppy Boy!

Magpie comes a calling / Let this be a warning / Don't let this fading summer pass you by

Koven Murie McCarthy, Explorer

Heading to Slide Lake with intrepid Greater Yellowstone explorer, Fryx.  

Koven Lundahl, Academic

The "Young Rhetoricians Conference"--our first on the academic circuit--wasn't so scary. Pacific waves, however... I love Monterey, and if conferences trend toward graduate-school-funded trips, I might love academia.

Koven Carson Cousteau, Philosopher

 

 

Lots to think about at the edge of the Blue Planet

Koven, Little League Coach

Koven, American

Koven goes to the Minor Leagues. Reno Aces: 8 or something. Opposing team: No idea. Koven: Wins hearts. And smiles. 

Koven, Synchronized Swimming Gold Medalist

 

 

He swims almost as well as pit bulls and pugs, but his specialty is watching retrieving dogs come to shore and obediently drop a ball, stealing that ball, and running with hopes of inciting chase.

 

Koven, Hunted

Home in Logan Canyon with Demi and Bryce

Koven, Pup, Brother, Boy, Best Thing Ever

Title & Photo Credits: Neko, E.Ita, Savannah, Bryce

 

 

Out

Pyramid Lake

Hey, look! There's a saber-toothed cat behind you.

Black Rock Desert Playa

Shadows and Sunshine

  Koven, the Dire Wolf, and me, the Pleistocenian wandered around Lake Lahontan over the weekend. We encountered our fair share of giant ground sloths and mammoths, but mostly just enjoyed the long golden light and this new scale of being out in the open. I found it reassuring, soothing, invigorating. Koven may be a little agoraphobic but I imagine it's an ancestral adaptation well suited to his survival. He encountered his first waves at Pyramid Lake and heard his first coyotes. We will continue working on settling, sleeping, and staying warm while out. Amazing pre-moon stargazing, and just so much space. 

Presence Presents

Life is not a mystery to be solved, but a reality to be experienced...  

A smattering of Koven's winter break experiences:

Horses, llamas, and goat

The Incredible Journey (two dewclaws up)

Immersion exposure therapy to children

Koven's back to his sweet Wyoming home for a warm and enthusiastic reunion with his Amy. He is spending time with the Teton Raptor Center crew, has upcoming visits with the Animal Adoption Center, and a meeting with his sister. He is engaging in puppy-play bliss; and yesterday afternoon included sprinting, sauntering, and sniffing along the Snake River Northeast Dike. This morning marks his right of passage initiation to skiing with Amy.

Predictably, the unanimous consensus that Koven remains most perfect still holds.

Winter!

Pet Trauma, Round Eight-ish

Sunshine Dinofelis Qiviut the First ("Handsome") under the influence. He doesn't appreciate narcotics...yet.

CLARIFICATION UPDATE: 1.) Koven most definitely is not the cat-killing dog mentioned below--that honor goes to Daisy, my brother's dog. The near-deadly experience marked the beginning of traumatic experiences for The Cat that preceded the trip to the ER vet and subsequent post. 2.) Sentence fragments. A mixed bag.

There was the scuffle with a cat-killing dog. The escape up a tree. The overheating, dehydrating, loss of circulation to limbs, tongue lolling, panting, glazed-eyed, near death, first-skeleton-of-a-cat to be seen in a tree paralysis. The fire department's reluctant rescue (and my eternal gratitude for it). The homeless Hot August Nights in Reno. The bear-spray surprise burn, scream, puke, temporary blindness. Spending a day alone with Honey's remains and having to break the news of her death. And now, narcotic-induced haze following the pain and insults of a gnarly, gnarly bladder infection--which is way better than the alternative urinary tract traumas--but still: anesthesia, catheters, "accidents." 

Usually Koven and I bow down to His Highest Supreme Majesty The Cat. This round, however, is confusing because I am now trying to appease Koven who wants to sniff and romp with the drugged feline. It's the first time he's had an advantage in the relationship, and I'm thwarting it. So he's been chewing/playing with a variety of body parts from  multiple species: tracheas, knee caps, tendons, necks, ears, hooves, genitalia, wings. 

"Cat" is not on the list.

...and this is your brain on linguistics: just say no to words

This round of "scholarship" with predator and prey is a linguistics research proposal. I look at reports of sexual crimes that are framed within the predator-prey "metaphor" and count the frequency of the signifier perpetrator/"predator" signifying males, females, and juveniles and see if there's any correlation between/among relationships of sex/gender/age  of the victim. This is the exciting part because I think it will involve statistics and I would like to replace words with numbers whenever possible. The other part is some literature review of sociolinguistics and gender/sex that includes pragmatics, semiotics, linguistic frames, metaphor, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis blah blah blah. I'm pretty sure the gap in the research is about the impact on non-human predators when humans are demonized as predators.

I have some sentences about predator-prey dynamics being free of language and morality and point out the many types of ecological relationships left out of the metaphor--what about scavenging? commensalism? mutualism? parasitism?  My bigger claim is probably along the lines of dehumanizing perpetrators, further silencing victims, the power and limitations of framing crime in this metaphor bla bla bla. What I really want to argue is that it's stupid, dumb, and wrong to co-opt the "vitality of the the struggle" (i.e.: the life-affirming, complexity, nuance, necessity of predator-prey dynamics) and label it as deviant, violent, immoral. What better evidence than representatives of the order carnivora--canididae and felidae--eating a previously frozen raw organic Cornish game hen on the living room floor? That troubles the metaphor. I think I'll make a visual argument.

Studies in the Sierra: Koven as Stickeen

"I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found." 





Going from the presupposition that brains are part of bodies, I decided that in order to thrive (or just think)  Koven, E.Ita and I needed to seek some pure air and the scenery where it is found. As a bow to Muir's spirit of adventure and freedom, when I couldn't find any of the trailheads I'd researched, we appreciated the opportunity to pursue a surprise trail on the El Dorado National Forest that led to the Desolation Wilderness.
"Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality." 

"Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever [her] fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, [she] is rich forever."