An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Present Human
Your species sometimes calls me invasive, but that just means that someone exists in a place where they weren’t before. Isn’t that the case for most beings on this planet, including yours?
I am off again for a while, running and preparing for the dark days ahead.
I thank you for your most recent messages.
Until our next exchange.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Song Dog
We’ve spoken of loss before. You are right about grief, it feels that there is no other place to be when you are in it. But ever so slowly, it’s power dulls as you become familiar with it. Becoming familiar with darkness and death is just as important as being familiar with life and birth. Feeling and sensing all of it is important to gaining a greater understanding of life beyond one’s own existence.
There are some humans who offer insights like you do. About intentionally spending time with the things that are uncomfortable, so that those experiences lose their power and you can naturally move into a place of curiosity instead....Why does this make me uncomfortable? What is it that initiates this discomfort? Why am I so opposed to some things and then perfectly fine and able to overlook other things?
As an artist, this is why I love your species so much. You are everywhere. You are of raw unbridled nature.
I think that our reaction to coyote is a reaction to the parts of ourselves that we deem too fierce to accept.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Present Human
While our species grieves differently, we all grieve. But as coyote, I am merely an extension of the ground, as an extension of the energy of things, and I do not linger long in that place. I know the bigger flow of life. Staying in one place takes too much energy.
Loss fades to other rising energies. And we move on. The tide leaves new gifts.
Thank you for your message.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Song Dog
I was drawing you last night and noticed that it was after 7pm, which got me thinking about how many traps would be live in Stanley Park for your family.
Which got me thinking about how you’d be out on your normal evening patrol and suddenly have a leg gripped in a trap, likely broken, and be suffering greatly. Which got me thinking about fellow pack members and offspring trying to help you, but in the end they’d have to leave your side.
This got me thinking about how these types of traps exist all the time all over BC, and how so many animals like you are out there at any given moment, leg or neck gripped to the bone, fighting the inevitable.
There are some humans that are trying very hard to make it so that these cruel traps are not allowed.
We are working to make our species morally accountable to all other species.
We see that there is a great imbalance, one that never should have existed in the first place. We are acknowledging that just because it has been done in the past does not make it alright. Suffering is unnecessary.
The human world is extremely polarized right now. The division is felt in the hearts of everyone, and it’s a weight that most of us carry constantly.
We all have things we cannot remain complacent about.
Like you, we fight for survival and for future generations.... far beyond just the human species.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Present Human
I’ve felt this breaking in my bones. There has been an unsettling. I listen to their painful songs.
Thank you for reconnecting with me.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Song Dog
Much has changed since we last communicated through this channel in the spring.
A lot is going on with members of your species in a place that humans have given the name Stanley Park... for you it's simply a place of respite from busy urban surroundings. And this is why I wanted to connect with you again now my friend.
Humans are killing you.
Both through trapping and through handouts.
You have done nothing wrong, you have followed your instincts - instincts that were affected by human behaviour.
You actually were doing what you do best: adapting to the world around you. The fault is entirely on humans. As a highly intelligent species, we know better.
There is outcry for change.
There is outcry for a serious dismantling of the human part the equation of ‘wildlife management’.
I know you carry no resentment or rage or vindictiveness, that you live and respond in the moment only. That’s what makes you, and all wildlife, such invaluable teachers for us humans. We’re so overly consumed with ourselves, we simply cannot wake up on our own.
Every night your relatives in Stanley Park are dying because of us. At this very moment, horrible suffering.
From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry for what we have done to you.
My hope is that your lives cut short will affect positive change for future generations of coyotes.
And of humans.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Present Human
Again I say, just be outside. Be in silence. Be with your senses. Let the light change and notice it. Let the crickets and the frogs take over again.
Until we meet again, in whatever realm, here or out there.
Thank you for your messages.
Dear Song Dog
I offer you a work in progress, this new animation piece is called 'Lineage'.
When I think of you this is what comes to my mind.
I sure have enjoyed connecting with you over this past little while, both here and daily in my studio. I know that your pups are on the way, and you are very busy preparing for your growing pack. So I will connect with you again soon, knowing you are out there and I will keep my eyes open for you as I am out walking in the night.
Thank you for being here my friend, until we meet again in whatever form that takes.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Present Human
We understand that there is no separation.
When one member of the pack sets himself apart, he struggles more. Becoming separate from the world is when life becomes hard. In identifying oneself as not being part of the whole, there is polarization, teeth gnashing.
A fish on the rocks next to the river is no longer part of the water and it struggles greatly.
Thank you for your message.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Song Dog
A long time ago I was asked to write about two separate things and to choose which one I thought was the right thing.
After thoroughly considering the perspectives of both things I could not choose one over the other.
In the act of identifying the two things as being different from one another, the matter of separateness and polarization was perpetuated.
Our defining things as different is what causes the suffering and separateness in the first place.
The Buddhist photographs the space between the buildings.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Present Human
A life force exists far beyond your human world. That world extends for eternity in abundance of both life and death. All in a natural course is as it should be.
Thank you for your message.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Song Dog
The spring season is here and it is time to let go. Let go of the winter. Let go of things that we’ve been holding in preparation for an abundant season.
When the turkey vultures return to their roost I know the season has shifted and that the cycles of birth and death are present.
Humans tend to gardens. Flowers bloom and get plucked or deadheaded, they know not their fate. I leave the blooms in my gardens for their full cycles because other lives depend on them. Even in the fall I leave many things untrimmed because they make winter homes.
All those cocoons are opening now, the birds eat, the ants crawl, the tulip heads disappear in the night.
It’s bigger than keeping up appearances. Everything is so much bigger than impressing the neighbours.
Dear Present Human
Thank you for creating and sharing footage of my family.
Here is a scene I watched last night for a while, I think you will appreciate it.
Thank you for your message.
Dear Song Dog
As the kind of human who creates things and tells stories, I made this animation called ‘Encounter’. Here is a story that I wrote to go along with this piece:
I want us to frequently sit alone in the black of night and to rely entirely on our senses to guide us back to communing with the natural world. The snapping branches, the leaves swaying in the breeze, the unidentified animal calmly sensing you as you sense them, the quiet flap of bats and owls, the grunts of raccoons, the distant coyote yips, and rhythmic crunching of four-legged footsteps passing by, the natural flow of instinct and survival, unimpeded by human hand.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Present Human
We try hard to understand the world around us. We silently observe the land, the flow of energy and activities, and we travel this way our entire lives.
Some humans don’t see us at all.
Some see us and we can tell they mean no harm.
Some see us and chase us or make loud noise at us.
But then there are some humans who track and seek us out. Those humans are the ones that we need to see the most.
Sometimes they have our canine brothers trained to help them - the very brothers we would try to play with, when in the control of humans will try to kill us.
I don’t understand why one version of my species is cared for by humans and the other is killed.
When these humans kill they kill all of the pack and often the neighbouring packs.But the thing is, when we die the pack regenerates bigger than before. This cycle of untimely death followed by an abundance of life is not just my species alone.
This is not the way we are meant to be.
Thank you for your message.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Song Dog
Can you sense the difference between a kind human and a cruel one?
In my species there are some who, like me, want to preserve and protect you and the other animals like you. We do our best to share about your importance and some of us even help when you are injured or sick.
Then there are others who find satisfaction in killing you purely for their own amusement. I sincerely hope you can sense when those humans are near.
In the human world we value loyalty very much, and you are known to be a very loyal species. I just can't reconcile how anyone would intentionally harm such a loyal species as you.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Present Human
Some lands are sacred spaces, and regardless of how it changes we are tied to it.
We know the range instinctually, through generations. The animals we harvest have been there through generations too.
The skies shift, but the stars always cross over in the same direction.
Thank you for your message.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Song Dog
My species likes to know things and so we examine your species and we learnt that you do better living closer to humans than you do in the farmlands.
Like a mother black bear brings her cubs into suburban areas as a safe haven from the aggressive male bears in the woods, your species finds protection in suburban spaces where you aren’t shot at or losing your territory come harvest time.
Human-centric spaces are the lesser threat, even though to us it would seem like the opposite should be true.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Present Human
The land communicates to me through my senses.
I know the history of spaces long before I was born. The pads of my paws pick up every message, the land tells me its history as I travel.
This storytelling informs me, and with every step I add my own flow to the storyline.
Thank you for your message.
An exchange between a human and an omnipresent coyote, using drawings and photography as the channel of communication. #dearsongdog
Dear Song Dog
As you are one with the land, I wonder: are you aware of physical spaces having deep significance? Perhaps over time or perhaps a type of energy or power in its history? A space that tells a story to those who can sense it?
I sometimes have the sense that certain areas I travel through have a deep significance – something occurred there long before I arrived, and regardless of the physical transformations, the history is strong and it is presented to those who can sense it.