Coyote

It all started with a swallow dropping a piece of dried clay on my head back in May during a workshop in Rock Island, IL. I was standing among a group of participants watching a dog search for a couple of hides among a collection of semi trucks, an RV, a utility trailer and such. I’ve seen birds randomly pooping on people, and I mean I’ve seen it – I’m not the one it happens to; I’m the one with a front row seat to a pigeon repainting somebody’s pony tail in Benjamin Moore’s latest color, bowel white. Two things that don’t happen to me: winning the lottery, and getting shat on by birds. Alas, an avian anal ambush this was not, this bird bombing was different. This seemed like a deliberate mission to deliver organic ordinance of non-bird origin directly to my brain bunker. But why? Was it a practice run, like Luke & gang prepping to take down the death star? Was I just a disposable dummy dome standing in for the real target, and this bird was like a winged Ethan Hunt leading a super secret mission, Migration: Impossible. Or was this something else? Maybe I was the intended target? What if a bird nuked my noggin with a hunk of earth for a reason!? Yeah, let’s go with that last one. A bird nuked my noggin for a reason. And then, everything changed.

On that same trip, post swallow strike, I went for a jog and birds were acting strange towards me. These must have been Florida birds, or Kobra Kai birds, because they were standing their ground, striking first and hard, and showing me no mercy. Among the birds who would not move from my path on this 3 mile jog were vultures, crows, geese, and robins. The robins took it up a notch, they chased me like I’d incurred fines at the local library (don’t ask me how I know). Robins have a mean ground game. They hop fast like tiny kangaroos, and they show no emotion, which makes it very hard to tell if they’re just trying to return something you dropped or claw the life out of you with their razor sharp velociraptor toes. Rather than find out if I’d lost an earpod or a hundred dollar bill, I opted to run like hell, but make it look like I was exercising hard, because, you know, I didn’t want to create mass hysteria. The smattering of people out walking, biking, and driving cars didn’t seem the least bit concerned by my brush with the beasts born of those adorable Tiffany-blue eggs. Maybe I was dreaming. That clay missile could have hit me just right to send me to sleepy town. Yeah, this was all a dre-AHHH FLIPPER DE JIBBET OUCHIE YAYA. I’d twisted my ankle on the slick metal surface of the pedestrian bridge over one of the thousands of rivers that one has to cross when jogging in the Quad Cities. It’s not a dream. I was being attacked en masse by all of birdom, and no one cared.

Joanne cared. Later that day, my friend and host for the weekend, Joanne, took me to dinner at a little African restaurant by the river (which river, of the hundreds, I couldn’t say) called, I Love FuFu. As we talked about the workshop day, dogs, and the bird mafia, we were invited into a conversation with a cloud of gnats. Much like the stink squiggles (or “personal dust cloud” if you believe AI, pshaw, stupid AI, and also thank you stupid AI for clarifying the spelling of “pshaw”) that accompanied Pigpen everywhere he went, these gnats became an extension of our beings. They hung around for the whole meal and, as I’d later find out, continued to pester Joanne at a separate location. After the workshop weekend concluded, Joanne sent me some suggested reading and some thoughts regarding the sudden shift in proximity and participation of the animal world into my world. Now I had a direction to move in. What would I have done had no one cared?!

If you care to know, this is the year of my 44th birthday. Some people find that number to be significant spiritually. I can’t say I’ve gone much past a general preference for even numbers over odd, as far as numerology goes. Still, this has been a remarkable year for me. I ran hundreds of miles of trail races from 30 mile to 100 mile races, completing two 100 hundred mile trail races within 6 weeks of each other. Given that just 6 years ago I thought my days as an active, athletic guy were over when my wife and I were smashed into by a drunk driver asleep at the wheel, I am beyond amazed at what my body has been willing to do for me. The running is demanding mentally and physically, but on some level, it’s just a game of attrition – outlast the voice in your head saying, “stop, everything hurts, this is bad, you don’t need to do this” and you get to “wow, this is glorious, nothing hurts, this is all I ever want to do”. It’s neat. And fun. Going back to May, when I left Rock Island, I was determined to figure out why birds were flocking to me like groupies to a band from the 80’s that sang songs like, “I Ran So Far Away” and “You Can Run”. This was a confusing and slow process. There is no finishing distance on the trails of my mind, and nature kind of has the lock on the attrition game. Still, this Sher-Flockian mystery also seemed like it could be neat and fun. You could say it had the potential to be a hoot.

Whooo Who-Who Whooo. It was Mother’s Day and the family was on a midday hike in a small nature preserve in the northwest part of the Minneapolis metro area. For a few hours we were serenaded by an owl close enough to hear, but too far away to see. Owls, it turns out, would visit me all year, but not with intent to assault from above or bully from below like their feathered brethren. Yet, this first owl oration coming so close to the Hitchcockian hailstorm of hollow-boned hooligans in Rock Island had me concerned for the meaning behind the avian encroachment into my life.

Sometime in late May I was in the gym and against the wishes of my weary legs I tasked them with the pointless exercise of exercise. See, there’s exercise that has a point, like the kind you do to stave off heart disease, hip fracture, and to maintain adequate speed such to outrun marauding robins. And, then there’s the kind of exercise you do to… get swole, as the kids say. I was growing accustomed to comments on the bulging nature of my calf muscles (admittedly from one – potentially biased – source, my wife) since I’d started seriously training for ultra distance runs. Being susceptible to vanity, I wanted to see if there was a limit to the calf swolleness one could attain. I guess I wanted to see if my calfs would turn into cows (I’m laughing, so the dumb joke stays!). Well, when you reach 44, no matter what kind of 1 percenter activities you’re doing, it doesn’t take that much to cause an injury. I loaded up some heavy plates on a calf raiser machine and strained both of my Herefords (anyway, that’s the official diagnosis from Dr. Jeff). This stunt had a ripple effect, causing knee pain, hamstring tightness, flaring up my back pain, and bringing on some acute sadness as I had only a couple of weeks left before a big 100 mile ultra race in the Colorado mountains.

Suddenly, I worried that I couldn’t count on my body. I didn’t want a real doctor to tell me I’d really messed something up because there’d be no time to heal before the race, and I didn’t want to be out on the trail and really really mess something up because that could be game over for who knows how long. Owls, robins, pretty much everything that wasn’t the voice in my head saying, “what are we gonna do?! What are we gonna do?!” was shut out. From that day through the rest of the summer, I was a mental and physical mess. I couldn’t convince myself I was fine, and I didn’t want to find out I wasn’t. I ran the 100 mile race and sealed my failure fate around mile 50 with a self-inflicted tourniquet wound caused by my knee sleeve rolling over itself and cutting into my leg. I barely finished a 100 mile bike race 2 weeks later as my legs revolted from the third world hostel treatment I’d given them in Colorado. Determination and stubbornness wouldn’t get me through these races much longer. I offered a prayer to the gods of the bovine bicep to find a way through the mess I’d lifted myself into. Turns out, there are no calf cattle deities. But there’s something close.

Spirit Animals. I really enjoy following Harvey Lewis, a teacher and ultra runner from Ohio, as he posts about his training and racing adventures and the people he meets along the way. In one post, Harvey speaks about summoning his spirit animal, the honey badger, to overcome the pain from a fall on the trail while competing in a backyard ultra run (this is a brutal form of torture whereby you run a 4 mile loop at least every hour, and the last person standing is the winner; Harvey can run for 4 days and 450 miles). It got me thinking, “what is my spirit animal?” I spent all of June, July, August, September, and most of October thinking about this. I thought my spirit animal could be: rabbit, deer, squirrel, owl, wolf, snake, chipmunk, dog, peregrine falcon, Muriel, a liger or maybe a battle stag (waste some time watching Jared & Jerusha Hess movies). Heck, I thought, why can’t all the animals of the earth be my spirit animal? When coyote came up, I was a hard no. My time spent in Los Angeles led me to see coyotes as ghostly, neighborhood scavenging wanderers with a lust for the leg meat of the Griffith Park homeless population – that, and late night party snacks from the Macklemore song, Castle (“Who wants to eat a coyote?”). So, coyote was a no. Until it wasn’t.

Midway through the summer we took a trip out to the west coast with a stop in the rocky mountains. One day I was running on a remote mountain trail with my dog Miles when we heard the cry of an injured dog – or that’s what we thought. Moments later, we saw a deer crash through the trees and race out of view. Then we heard the unmistakable and very close sounds of a coyote. We heard screaming and yipping. And it kept getting louder and closer. My limited understanding of coyotese told me the deer had been an expected meal and we had spooked the main course right off the dinner table. We were now on the receiving end of a very negative Yelp review. The inconsolable canid thought I was putting on a rock concert for him as I found a large stick and beat it against boulders and trees yelling in his direction to go away. Unfortunately, he liked my music, screaming louder and moving closer. Against the advice of, well, everyone ever, Miles and I ran away. We’re good runners, so there’s that. We did not turn into prey, the coyote did not follow and eat us. Do not expect the same results when you find yourself in a game of coyote tag. I had multiple other encounters with coyotes throughout the rest of our trip in Colorado, Utah, and, in the Agua Tibia Wilderness in California, where I felt them watching me from the brush. You don’t choose your spirit animal, it chooses you. I wasn’t ready to concede to the coyote, but the signs were mounting.

Later in the summer, I listened to an interview Tim Ferriss did with Elan Lee about their collaboration on a card game. The name of the game: Coyote. I bought the game because it sounded great. If I’m honest, I have a blue porcelain coyote in Raku style with a horsehair design that’s been sitting on my desk for years. Maybe my heart knew something my brain didn’t want to accept. Coyote is viewed as a trickster, deceptive, cunning, playful, and wise. Coyote frequently teaches lessons that involve subterfuge, humor, and invite the learner to take himself less seriously and look at life in different ways. Did me and coyote just become best friends?! Yep! (for the love of dog, watch Step Brothers).

Before my final 100 mile race of the year, I capitulated to coyote. While en route to the race in Tennessee, I stopped to visit friends in Illinois. With my mind at rest, I could finally address the needs of my body. It turned out, I was tricking myself. I had no known injuries, no reason for all of my pains. I was keeping myself in needless pain. With some help from my friend, the espresso expert/weed wizard, I was ready to be done with my self-deception. And, as soon as I accepted it was me who was causing my pain and me who could end it, I ended the pain. My back stopped hurting, my hamstrings loosened up, my knees and calves calmed, ready to run the rugged trails of the Daniel Boone Forest. I ran the race feeling better than I had all year. It was still a grueling challenge, but my body wasn’t fighting me, it was all too eager to go to the ends of the earth for me. I could take a beating like Wile E. and keep going all the way to the finish line. During the nighttime part of the race I yipped and howled with abandon.

What will I learn from coyote? Maybe I’ll learn that it’s time to make a change. To look at life differently, to see the playfulness in doing and saying things that might be confusing and contrarian. Wait, I already do these things! Ok, coyote is definitely my spirit animal. Maybe I need to learn to fully embrace my strengths and to be grateful that I engage the world with the spirit of coyote. For those who might not appreciate a trickster looking to lighten the mood while also enlightening the room, coyote can help to teach me not to dwell on the people who reject my nature. Coyote can also guide me out of my own deception, just like he guided me out of my summer of pain. I’m all in – but I’ll (probably) draw the line at nibbling on human legs.

I recently revisited one of my favorite nose work games, the one-of-a-kind barrier game. It is a repetition exercise with a hide that acts as a target, and an ever increasingly challenging barrier that gets built find after find, depending on the path the dog takes to get to the hide. This game is pure coyote. It’s tricky, deceptive, humorous, and there’s a sort of twisted wisdom to it. Why did I put this game aside for so long? Sometimes you need to step away from something to return and feel its power. The true power of the one-of-a-kind barrier game is in what it allows the dog to reveal about his thought process and expectations. Even when a dog knows right where the target odor is, he can be immobilized by an oddly placed broom or a couple of tipped over chairs. Every dog will meet with his “insurmountable” barrier at some point in the game, and time & effort become increasingly unlikely to win the day. Yet, make one little change (a supportive gesture from his human, a pairing of food with the odor, or a chance to watch his human mill around, over, and through the barrier), and the dog will act as if a door has magically opened where only a solid brick wall had been. Run another round, and watch the dog’s confidence increase, like nothing can stop him. Nose work is simple, but mysterious. The real challenge is not to get lost in a forest of false problems and flimsy solutions. It’s all about communication. It’s all about fun.

Before coyote officially hung his shingle on my soul as my spirit animal, I considered that deer, chipmunk, raven, rabbit and owl might be my spirit animals. All year I’d had close and repeated encounters with these beings. No doubt they are delivering significant messages to me, but none fit as my spirit animal like coyote did.

Do I “believe” in spirit animals? I don’t really care. I believe in the power of perception and the mysterious workings of the human consciousness. If shifting my perception to the concept of spirit animals has an interesting effect on my life, I’ll play with belief and enjoy going all in. Coyote is adaptable and represents revelation. Why not afford myself the opportunity for insight and growth?

If you dig the coyote spirit of this blog consider treating yourself to a howling good time with a purchase of Coyote the game using the affiliate link that also supports the blog.

Happy Yipping!