5. Davis

It was just an ordinary Saturday, really. Nothing to suggest it would shift Davis’s thinking. Though on Friday, after work, he had asked Alex and Yesenia if he could join them on their Saturday ride. He had managed to hold his own, which shouldn’t have surprised him. He was a good cyclist in West Virginia. Not good enough to enter races or anything, but confident and capable enough to not injure himself on some of the more difficult trails around the New River Gorge. Colorado was terrifying. The rankings were much higher than anything he had experienced, but over the last year, Davis had become a more technical rider, looking at the details of a trail before he got to the beginning. There was a metaphor there for the way his life had shifted since sobriety, but he would need more coffee before he could make the words connect in his brain.

After the ride and a shower, Davis settled in for his morning routine— a cup of coffee on the back porch, something that he had done even in the depth of winter. It tended to ground him and help him remember where he was, how far he had come. Then he would repeat a poem that a counselor had given him years ago that had somehow lodged in his brain.

I am the master of my fate.

I am the captain of my soul.

After his fingers or the tip of his nose were too cold or his coffee was empty, Davis headed back inside and spent a solid thirty minutes mindlessly scrolling on social media.

You had to have some vice, he supposed.

Between baseball highlights, depressing international news, witty captions from the National Park Service, and GoPro videos of mountain biking, Davis’s thumb stopped his scroll.

Clear the Shelters! National Shelter Pet Day

A rescue, just a few exits down the highway.

And maybe it was the budget that had gotten approved for the visitor center exhibit, or maybe it was the way that Jeremy had sent a GIF of Pattie Gonia saying “Forest, Serve!” in celebration, or maybe it was the fact that Yesenia had complimented Davis’s riding, but something shifted into place. Colorado, this forest, this odd little cabin he lived in, was his home. And this odd little cabin would be a lot better with a furry friend. Fifteen minutes later, Davis was parking at the shelter and filling out a form with his name, address, and history with pets.

The volunteer, an older woman who was wearing cat ears, smiled at him and asked, “Dog person or cat person?”

“Dog,” Davis answered immediately, then explained that he worked at the national forest, which was good, because dogs were able to go on the trails through national forests. He didn’t mind cats, per se— there were always some prowling around his uncle’s farm and in his backyard when he was a child. But something about a dog and the physical affection pulled at Davis’s heartstrings in a different way. The woman put up a small sign at the desk and led him down a concrete-block hallway, where he was met by another volunteer, who unlocked the kennel. He stepped into the damp kennel. It smelled a bit antiseptic and a lot like his uncle’s living room, like dog, and was overcome with the immediate desire to somehow find a way to take home every single dog here.

“Most people like to walk up and down the aisles a few times and see the whole pack,” the volunteer was saying. “I’ll be in the hallway. Let me know if there are any dogs that you’d like to take out in the yard.”

Davis began to slowly walk up and down the room, a little unsure of what he was doing. How did you pick just one dog when there were thirty here that needed a home?

He felt something cold brush against his left hand and looked down to where a stubby dog nose was pushing against his palm. There had been very few moments in Davis’s life where he instinctively knew something. He knew the first time he learned that there were people whose job it was to protect nature that he would be one of them. He knew the first time he went hunting that he would never go again. He knew one arbitrary afternoon during a summer home from finishing his undergrad degree that he should probably not have another drink, maybe ever. He knew the first time he set foot in Colorado that the ground here called to him. And when he looked into this tan pit bull’s soft and gentle blue eyes, he knew that this dog had stolen his heart.

He crouched down to get eye level with the dog, ignoring the ache in his low back. “You’re an angel, huh?” he whispered, putting out his hand for the dog to continue to smell. Two little sniffs, then a tentative lick of his hand. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” He looked at the tag— Mary Anne— along with a printed photo. A flashback to sitting on Gram’s couch, wrapped up in a scratchy blanket that somehow felt good, sipping warm ginger ale and eating broth and dumplings while reruns of Gilligan’s Island played on her television. “Mary Anne, huh? I always liked her more than Ginger.” Davis scratched behind her ears, earning himself a pleased groan from the dog. “Well, I also liked the Professor, too.”

The paperwork took a bit to fill out, and Davis ended up purchasing a probably overpriced bag of dog food and a harness from the shelter, telling himself that Mary Anne deserved everything as she made her way to her new home and that even if he was overcharged, the shelters deserved it. When he had first moved to Colorado, he had done what, to him, was a standard nature dork orientation— looked up the state flower (Columbine), state bird (lark bunting), mammal (big horn sheep), and tree (blue spruce). He had ended up discovering that Colorado also had a state amphibian (tiger salamander), fossil (stegosaurus), rock (yule marble) and a state pet. Davis had expected the state pet to be something painfully all-American and unaffordable, like a purebred golden retriever or one of those doodle dogs that weren’t as cute as everyone had him believe. But no, the Colorado state pet was a shelter dog and shelter cat. As he took the leash from the volunteer, officially confirming that Mary Anne was his dog, he began to feel his roots here grow just a bit deeper.

“Are you afraid of cars, big girl?” Davis asked as Mary Anne gave his truck a tentative sniff. “Or are you more afraid of the fact that I don’t think this truck has ever been washed?” Davis opened up the passenger door, and the dog leaped into the cab, immediately heading across the center console and sitting in the driver’s seat. “Not afraid, apparently,” Davis said. “But I don’t think you’ll meet the federal requirements for driving a government vehicle.” Davis laughed, and Mary Anne answered with a sniff before plopping down on the passenger seat, facing backward. He maintained a steady conversation with the dog as he drove back to the national forest and was rewarded with Mary Anne’s delightful selection of groans, sniffs, yips, and one large sneeze. By the time he pulled into his driveway and headed to the passenger door to make sure he had a firm grip on Mary Anne’s leash before she ran away into the mountains, he was fully, 100 percent, deeply in love with this dog.

He brought her inside, double checking to make sure that every door and window was locked, and he supervised as she tentatively walked through every room in the small cabin. “You like it here?” he asked, watching as Mary Anne hopped up on his bed, turned around three times, and collapsed into an impossibly small ball of dog and immediately began snoring. “Yeah, darling, you like it here.” Davis closed his bedroom door, then unloaded everything he had purchased, sliding a towel under the mixing bowl full of water and a soup bowl for kibbles that would do for now. He grabbed his phone and headed back into the bedroom, where Mary Anne hadn’t moved an inch. Settling into bed, and already contorting his body around the dog, who, of course, decided that the center of the bed was the perfect place for her, he scrolled through a shopping app. A set of food bowls, dog bed, toys, a running leash, poop bags, a few more toys, and then a set of winter booties in case her feet got cold— all added to the cart.