How the Hen House Turns

In late summer 1983 we drove to Flagstaff, Ariz. to begin a delightful year of teaching and folk dancing. Our Santa Fe shepherd, Poncho, went with us. He hated riding in the car, until we stopped at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Gallup and shared our lunch with him.

What a mood change! Instead of moping, all curled up in the back seat, he sat up and stuck his nose eagerly into the crack in the rear window, all the way to our rented house on the hill above the railroad station in Flagstaff.

The house was nice enough there, but the backyard was too small for an active dog raised on ¾ acres of ponderosas and lawn. Poncho soon realized that there were no crows to chase out of the yard in Flagstaff. There were no chickens to herd, no rabbits to flop over him, and no pet skunks to keep clean. The squirrels were off somewhere else, too far away to be interesting, for there were no ponderosas in the yard.

Poncho showed all the signs of depression. Hang-dog we call it when people mope around all day, doing nothing, exploring nothing, not even sleeping much. I guess he was homesick. He might have done better if he could have gone folk-dancing with me, but at least the occasional hikes in the nearby mountain helped ease his boredom.

That spring, when we arrived back home, he came back to life. He quickly re-established his usual path through the trees and across the grass, delighted to be chasing the squirrels again.

I sit here in our brand new place in California and wonder if there is a parallel with his experience and my missing those same ponderosas. I guess not. The moving was hard work, both physically and emotionally. Our moods dipped back and forth between anticipation and grief at leaving our ¾ acres and irreplaceable long-time friends and the source of so many good memories raising our family.

Now I wouldn’t call the occasional surges of grief the kind of homesickness that Poncho felt. It never had a chance to take root. Poncho had nothing to do, but we have an invigorating calendar in a new world of redwoods and fascinating people. The dips into grief have stopped, because our connection to Los Alamos continues, thanks to Little Theatre, the Los Alamos Daily Post, and telephone calls from friends.

My friend Joy was right. Late in life there is a finite window of time in which you can make a major move and happily resettle in a new place. We almost waited too long.