To a Longtime Trail Companion, Goodbye

You'll have to excuse me this week. This column has nothing to do with science, but I'm having a hard time thinking about science right now. Last week, my dog Jane died of a disease that she kept to herself.

When I walked her into the vet's office last Thursday, I hoped we'd be out that afternoon with some pills and instructions. Not so. The look on the vet's face when she saw an x-ray of Jane's bulbous midsection told me my dog would not leave the clinic. One hour later, after the doctor in surgery showed me cancer that turned her spleen into a grapefruit and also infested her liver, I knew it was time to say goodbye.

I can't describe the daze that followed Jane's death because I think I'm still there. All I can do is roll out the numbers: Of my 14 years in Alaska, the best in my life, Jane was by my side for 13. Three summers ago, my chocolate-coated Lab trotted across Alaska with me along the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline, and her name is now in the title of a book about that trek. She tagged along with me through the best and worst of the past 4,600 days. During our daily walks, which she inspired me to do even on 40 below days, she got us outside to see beautiful, free things that have become the most meaningful part of my life.

I miss her most at home. In the past, I've written this column from the cool of my cabin, with Jane lying nearby on the floor. During breaks from typing, she'd follow me outside and chase tennis balls I banged into the woods with a baseball bat. She enjoyed sniffing out the tennis balls with those moving brown nostrils, and at the same time got me away from the computer. When I returned home after work, Jane would levitate with excitement, then run to the yard and pick up the first stick she encountered, mouthing it proudly with her tail whirring like a helicopter blade. She was the slayer of bad moods.

Jane gave me so much the total is hard to add up. She instilled in my life a pattern structured around her daily walks. She made me take up activities you can do with a dog, things like cross-country skiing, bird hunting, and hiking. Jane’s graceful association also paid off in other ways. An editor at Duquesne University Press said in a feature story that without Jane, and the man-and-dog theme she provided, the press would not have wanted my book. That book, Walking My Dog, Jane, From Valdez to Prudhoe Bay along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, is about a journey that I wrote about in this column every week during the summer of 1997.

Because I wrote about her using a portable computer during the pipeline hike, people always knew Jane when they bumped into us along the route in 1997. Wagging her body beneath her red backpack as she approached, she made every human encounter on the pipeline a pleasant one.

I have a friend in San Francisco who knows me as well as anyone. He hiked 200 miles of the pipeline with Jane and me, and it was his words I missed as a few friends and I buried Jane near one of her favorite spots. John from California came through with a letter recently, and I finish with a bit of it here:

"I think Jane gave you enough meaningful time that you really don't need to dwell on the meaning of it all. While she lived you gathered a lifetime of images and wonderful distractions. Her time came to an end, like yours will, but, damn, how can you not be glad for it all? Really, more than the pain you feel with these past few days, the benefits of that relationship far exceed the end of your journeys together . . . You have so much, and she provided much of it to you. Ultimately, my friend, when you feel sad, get on your knees, and say thank you."

Thank you, Jane.