Will Shonbrun:  Jenny, A love story

A Place Beyond Words and Language

Jenny died in the fall of 1976. She was my dog. To say I loved that animal doesn’t say anything. To tell you she died 50 years ago and hardly a day passes that she doesn’t come to mind, tells you what you need to know. In a sense I killed her.

Here’s that story. 

At 33, my life collapsed. Not an unusual thing, but it was unique for me. After all, it was the only life I’d known in some depth and detail. So, I packed the dog, all 95 lbs. of squirming St. Bernard, and put the things I treasured – some books, records, speakers and a turntable – in my piece-of-shit car, and said good-bye to New York City in the rearview and headed for the hills. Literally. 

Oddly, I was headed for the Berkshire Mountains, but wound up in the Catskill Mountains instead, where I lived for a few more years, and where I started anew and began my life again. Easier said than done, but that’s not the theme of my story. 

After three years, it was time to come off my mountain and jump back into the current that carries us all whichever way the wind blows. The current has no caring for who or what we think we are, it is just what pushes us to wherever we might land. With such knowledge, I jumped back into NYC, with the vague hope things could get better. But as with everything, there was a price. 

The price was my dog, my constant companion, solace and friend. I’ve never found more suitable words to describe my relationship with that animal. There is no relationship on Earth akin to the one of dog and human, bound together in mutual love, dependence and adventure. It somehow brings out the better and sometimes hidden qualities of both. 

The time had come for me to slide back into the chaos called life, smack dab in the middle of New York City, with its acrid smells, perpetual noise and frantic pace. 

But I could not take my dog from that deep mountain place that had become her home, her natural place. To make her come back from the snow-covered wild that she’d so adapted to was unthinkable. So, I found a home for her with a family in the rural Catskills, and drove away and left her there, never to return. 

Some months later a phone call told me Jenny’s leash had gotten caught up on one of those wires people rig up so their dogs can run but stay tethered. There was no one home, and it was an accident, they explained. They were kind-hearted. And it was there she perished. My beautiful, devoted friend. 

I’d gone to the mountains looking for some kind of freedom and took my dog with me. We belonged together. We both tasted freedom in those hard winter mountains and we’d both reconnected with the wild, the uncertain, the reality of nature when you live close to it. When you live on it and in it and it starts at your backdoor. It had made us different from how we’d been before. I knew there was no going back, and I knew I’d have to go it alone this time. 

Since that time I’ve had a bunch of dogs and dearly loved their company. There is nothing that compares with the pure joy of watching a dog on a walk in the woods. There is more life in those moments than can be found elsewhere. We are of this earth and nothing more, and when we reconnect with that, we’re reborn. 

My freedom cost me my dog. Her freedom cost her, her life. It’s a pretty steep price, but then what’s of true value always is. If there’s a consciousness after death I’d like to be with Jenny, and we’ll hike to Kaaterskill Falls and tell each other our life stories, in the place beyond words and language.