From "Secret." Image by Sarah Richter.
Tizz: I don't want to be alone again.
Rowdy: You aren't. You never were.
Tizz: I love you, Rowdy, but I'm a very physical being, you know? I mean, I guess that's not important to you but...
Rowdy: *laughs* I'm a physical being too.
Tizz: *gives him an incredulous look* A-huh.
Rowdy: Look. In physics, energy is physical. It can exact force. It can move mountains.
Tizz: So you're saying that spirits are made of energy.
Rowdy: Among other things.
Tizz: Okay. What else?
Rowdy: Well...
Tizz: If you are a being of eternity, of light, and separate from me, explain this thing for me that I don't know and, by this new knowledge, prove you are.
Rowdy: You want proof? Okay. For one, we have never been separated. Separation is an illusion. We are all connected.
Tizz: *rolls eyes* Okay, Gandhi.
Rowdy: Yes? *grins*
Tizz: Oh, he's here, too? *looks around*
Rowdy: No, but you can access his wisdom.
Tizz: That's different. That's writing -- old writing. He's dead.
Rowdy: Well, it's hard to write without a physical body.
Tizz: You're saying Gandhi is a spirit, and you can access new information from him?
Rowdy: Yes.
Tizz: What's his favorite ice cream?
Rowdy: Butter pecan.
Tizz: *scoffs* No! That's mine.
Rowdy: I told you we were all connected.
Tizz: What's your favorite ice cream?
Rowdy: *grins* Rabbit.
Tizz: Ugh.
Rowdy: *licks lips*
The real Rowdy was a wolf who I "adopted" (helped pay for his care) on Mission Wolf in Colorado in 1997. He was born on April 1, 1986. In 2000 I got a letter from Mission Wolf telling me Rowdy had died. “He lived a good life, and his mate, Luna, and he were inseparable until the end.” I know that death is a door and nothing more, but I was very sad I’d never gotten to “meet” him. It had been a dream to go to Mission Wolf someday (and still is). Not long afterward, I got that letter; while meditating at my “Sacred Place” (an icy lake in the moonlight), Rowdy bounded over snowbanks and knocked me flat. He’d come to bring joy to me and to help me find answers from deep inside my own heart. Often, at his own capricious whim, he takes the form of a beautiful man — usually when the conversations and interactions require the complexity of human expression. I have come to feel that Rowdy is very real, and here I will record some of our conversations. (And I’m told to say, this was his idea, to begin with.)
