The most telling moment, as always, comes in crisis. We are on Bald Eagle Lake one afternoon, foolishly striking out in unreliable weather for a campsite on the far shore. A hard, sudden wind catches us port-side and we must tack. I navigate, terrorized, from the stern with my limited sailing skills, keeping the bow into the whitecaps just enough to prevent us from capsizing while making some small progress toward shore.

Other than death, Sophie is my greatest worry. Before she became accustomed to the canoe, she had a habit of standing and shifting her weight alarmingly if anything upset her. Now, sitting flat on the cold, wet bottom of the canoe for stability, I talk softly to her under the wind's slap and cry: "It's okay, Sophie. Shhhh. Stay, Sophie. Good girl."

I imagine her jumping up and spilling our fragile craft, or panicking and leaping overboard in the middle of the wide, deep lake where we can barely help ourselves, let alone a shipwrecked Newfoundland. I am steering with all my strength and Andy is paddling hard, glancing back at me occasionally with wild, determined eyes, but Sophie's reaction will decide our fate.

My girl holds steady. In the rocking, pounded canoe she lies still and tense, watching me as if I had a steak strapped to my forehead. Whatever I do will be her sign, so as long as I sit tight, so does she. Because my dog is watching, and because she, or all three of us, may die if I give her reason to panic or if I pilot the boat astray, I beat down a fear that has become almost asthmatic and steer, stroke after cement stroke, to the island where we will take refuge for the night.

As we beach the canoe on steep rocks and stumble ashore, Sophie obeys with a clarity of motion that a thousand obedience classes never would inspire. Tonight we are bound, my dog, my husband and I, by the most primitive survival instincts. We are all quiet as Andy and I work sweatily, bumping and dropping everything, to get the tent up and make dinner before the storm attacks for real. At last there is food on the Coleman stove: pasta eaten from the pot with spoons. Sophie, usually ambivalent about dog chow, has developed a wilderness habit of wolfing her food the instant it appears in her bowl, and tonight our common hunger and nervous exhaustion compels all three of us to snatch and gulp at our meal.

Each of us has felt exactly what the others felt in these last few hours -- consuming, inundating rushes of fear, companionship, panic, trust, relief, hunger. The species boundaries have fallen, and I doubt that they will ever be fully intact again. Today we have saved each other's lives. It is the only and ultimate thing anyone can really know about another person or animal or about oneself: Could I trust him with my life? Can she trust me with hers? And there is no way to get to the answer without first offering up the life.

This essential need to identify our pack, the ones we can really trust when crisis strikes, is what takes people into extreme wilderness situations in an era when we no longer need to put our lives at risk this way. In the tent tonight under wind and storm -- so worn out that we ignore the basics of hygiene and fall together sticky and smelly -- woman, man and dog are unable to sleep without the comforting contact of the other two, a melange of flesh and fur and Thermarest that is the only safety.
salon.com | June 15, 1999

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