Dog-Incidence!

 Dog Rescues Forlorn Resident! 



Take a good look at this cottage on Capitol Island, just off Boothbay Harbor, Maine.  Can you see my roots in the place? countless summers were spent here.  Then with my grandfather's death in 1978, the cottage passed out of our family hands and into "strangers." It had been withe the family since the 1890's.  If you can mourn the loss of a place, then I grieved the loss of this cottage. 

For years, I stood on the beach below and gazed up at the cottage.  I imagined my whole family there--where we took meals, socialized, and just hung out.  When I had a sabbatical, I actually thought about renting the place! 

But you gotta let things go. Anyway--  I told myself I carried the cottage inside.  What you tell the head rarely wraps around the heart.  I just flat out missed the place and the vessel of so many memories of growing up there--and growing together with my family.  You gotta let some things go....


Enter, Duncan! 

So, I was coming back on this boat trip...and as I reached the wharf, I saw this group of kids gathered to pat this Chocolate Lab.  Irresistible!  I'm the original Lab lover, and I just went over and got into line. "Can I take my turn," I said to the owners?  That's all it took.  One thing led to another.  It's a small world.  You know how these things happen.  Have you guessed it?  Of course--the owners of the cottage!  You could have knocked both of us over with a feather.  By the time it was done, they invited me over to see the cottage.  For the first time since the house was sold, I stepped foot into it.  Have you guessed it again?  As good as it was--a wonderful experience, it was after all, the "shell."  The outward structure of an inner temple inside--the place where I had come from, never the same or replicable in the world.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I would not have passed this up for anything. There is a sense in which the outer appearance renews what you carry around inside yourself.

Now, there is another way to understand this story.  Dog
owners--or rather dogs who own people--have always had the uncanny ability to bring people together.  How many stories can we count of those who met and married with their dogs who matched them up?  It is said that a dog lives "open to the world."  Perhaps they predispose their owners that way also.  Maybe what looks like a coincidence is less of one--or is just a little more likely because of the love of a dog.  Was this a coincidence or a "dog-incident?" 




Duncan stands near the edge of the cliff that the cottage sits on.