His man would leave first thing, sunup, to go to town. The beat-up early 2000’s vintage Dodge Caravan would hit the gravel road and accelerate to subsonic speeds almost immediately as he turned on to the county road, brutalizing the undercarriage and suspension over washboard tracks, sending a plume of dust 20 feet in the air behind him.
The dog would start his day then, outside and on the move, on patrol, as the man went for his first of many trips to town for reasons we could only ever guess on. We noticed him when we arrived for our first of many trips there. We saw him walking nonchalantly across our property. He didn’t give us a second look; clearly he knew we were there but we didn't factor in to his calculus one way or the other.
His presence was unapologetic and confident. A large, shock-white wolf’ish dog with massive paws. Initially we wondered if he might be aggressive or unpredictable, mainly due to his size and complete disdain for property boundaries. Maybe it was the context of the feral environment and the strangeness - a wasteland of sand, rock, creosote bush, haboob winds, strange creatures and endless skies.
We expected some reaction, one way or the other. After all, if we are the stewards of this world, dogs are our primary agents and one of the their defining characteristics acting as such is a curiosity and a reaction to all things novel.
But there was none of this. His defining feature was aloofness, a complete disregard for our attention one way or the other.
Our first night in the cabin, we slept on an air mattress that we picked up at Yucca Valley’s huge new Wal-Mart. It was late September, and we got mobbed by bizarre Jurassic-park themed winged bugs that just kept spawning; the night air was still warm with late summer heat, so we tossed and turned all night under the assault of the bugs, sand, dust, and the window a/c unit blasting us with an ice vortex. Inside the vortex frigid and dry, outside the vortex across the room oppressively hot. Bugs everywhere.
the ice vortex
We noticed him again the next morning, nonchalantly patrolling the neighborhood via a southeast meandering walk through our property. The “neighborhood” was a series of square 5-acre square plots of land, some developed with small homes or cabins, and at least as many abandoned, gutted, hollowed-out shacks of bygone “improved” property, relics of a postwar land-lease act. For a couple of decades under the Small Tract Act of San Bernardino County, homesteaders could sign a lease with the county, put up a shack on it, pretend to live there, and legally lock in the deed before migrating safely back to the creature comforts of Los Angeles. Everywhere gravel driveways that cut in to huge sand berms plowed to the side of the roadways, all of the expanse dotted by ancient, indicator-species Mojave creosote bushes spaced out roughly 10’ apart, playing half-dead and patiently awaiting the couple inches of rain that comes by every 6 months or so (often all at once).
Nothing ever really dies in the desert, things just go to sleep.
Walking around the property we noticed canine tracks and some dog scat. We assumed they were his, although later that day a coyote sauntered right by us as we were sitting under a palo verde tree in the front yard. The coyote seemed a little annoyed to see humans occupying his domain for the first time in his life.
We didn't pay the white dog much more mind on that first trip; he would do his thing and leave us alone. Besides, we had work to do. The house was dated, dusty and gross. I would have scored it 1/10 on anybody’s aesthetics chart. So some random dog that roamed around keeping to himself quickly fell out of sight, out of mind. That first trip we were busy with tearing off some interior laminate paneling and burning it in an oil container.
It was bad.
Over that first winter I started making the regular 450-mile trip from our primary home in the mild, green and temperate Bay Area, to the land of extremes. I can almost make that trip in my sleep nowadays. Over the Altamont, down Interstate 5 to Buttonwillow exit, across to Bakersfield, and pick up the 58 east across the desert. I-5 driving on that section between the Tracy and the Grapevine south of Bakersfield is best described as psychotic boredom. A flat highway through farmland, prosecuted by the worst and most entitled drivers in the free world who will stop at nothing, not even vehicular manslaughter, to shave off a grand total of 4 seconds in order to arrive early for the 1.5 hour gridlock struggle session through the Los Angeles metro area.
When you get through Bakersfield on to the CA-58 eastbound there’s a noticeable sense of relief and ease. The traffic moves faster, but it’s less hurried, less frantic. People drive fast in the Desert, with a purpose on moving for their own sake, rather than trying to get over on everybody else.
There was a lot of retrofitting and demolition to be done in those early trips. I was on the road constantly, back and forth between the Bay Area and the Desert. Always looking forward to the next development, the next project. I hauled building supplies, tools, lumber; I installed a shipping container for storage in the back 40. Some times my wife would be with me. Some times alone or hauling a friend along to join the experience. Getting covered in insulation and trashed drywall. Wondering how much asbestos exposure I might have subjected myself to. Days when I was just weary to my very core, chasing a vision I had of what this place needed to be.
Every evening serenaded by coyote parties out hunting under Orion’s Belt, under the Big Dipper, under Polaris, under Andromeda’s cloud, and millions of other distant suns.
And each day we’d see him.
Walking the perimeter, across the eastern edge of our property.
And sign. Footprints, dog poop, and lizard carcasses. He would hunt Desert Iguanas, dig them up, root them out and leave their remains strewn around.
Some time during that first spring there, spring of 2018, came a time when we both became interested in one another. Aloofness gave way to curiosity; the radius of his orbit tightened. Gravity, the defining force that keeps the cosmos aligned. I noticed him spending more and more time on our property as he would go about his rounds, waiting for his man to return. Often looking our way. It felt like the Desert itself was starting to accept us.
He accepted us spending more and more time on his property as we would go about our rounds.
Shade trees in the Desert are a luxury; they demand time, effort, and water. We are fortunate to have a row of Tamarisk trees,
(Salt Cedars), in the back yard, the closest about 20 yards south of the house. He’d lay down in shade under the big one. I was working on the place, and he’d watch me occasionally while scanning the main road. So we started leaving snacks and a bowl of water out for him. Some hot dogs, sandwich meat, whatever was on hand. Then the next day, another snack, a little closer. Meet me half way. Meet me half way again, from the previous half way. He kept coming.
And then before I knew it this happened:
Hi buddy.
So, things kind of took off from there. It didn’t take long to get to this:
To this:
And, even to this:
Gunny, king of the desert, destroyer of beds.
So he conquered our property and our castle, but what else was to be expected. It was already his; we were just leasing it from him.
And we didn’t know what his name was for a while, until we got to know John.