About five miles west of Jasper, Arkansas, in a place where, if the imagination is permitted to run wild, “Dueling Banjos” can be heard on the wind, the road to Kyles Landing, a campground located alongside the Buffalo River, departs State Highway 74 at the top of Mount Sherman. The road, at its best, is a steep and rough three-mile dirt road that takes a toll on vehicles, which is made evident during the drive by the pungent smell of smoldering brake pads. At its worst, it’s little more than a widened trail that quickly descends Mount Sherman through the hardwood forest. But along the way, views across the wide valley of the Buffalo River, glimpsed through small openings in the tree canopy, hint at the beauty waiting at Kyles Landing.
The campground is nestled in a valley surrounded on every side by some of the tallest mountains in the Ozarks. The river runs along the northern edge of the valley. Towering above the river are unbelievably tall sandstone and limestone bluffs. Much of the year, with the obvious exception of the gray bluffs, green is essentially the only color visible in the valley. But even in late fall and winter, and despite the fact that I love living in a city, Kyles Landing is a beautiful alternative to the daily crush of life and staid, concrete development. For that reason, Kyles Landing is a hallowed place for me.
Over the years, I’ve spent many nights there. On the majority of my trips, especially over the past ten years, Zoie accompanied me. She loved it as much as I did. She learned to swim there, which is something she enjoyed for the rest of her life. While there, she went on short hikes with me, always running ahead of me several hundred feet, looking back to see if I was following, and then running to greet me with a smile on her face. In fact, on our weekend outings there, she normally swam and ran so much that by Sunday morning she walked around our campsite tenderly nursing her sore muscles. For her own reasons, I think she too found it to be a hallowed place.
I particularly remember during one trip to Kyles Landing, on a sunny but brisk spring day, accompanied by several of our close friends, Zoie and I crossed the river to take a short hike up the mountain facing the campground. The place where we crossed happens to be immediately downstream from the pool where she swam for the first time. The water that day was cold and, nourished by recent rains, flowed relatively deep and fast. I briefly thought about carrying Zoie across because I was afraid the water would be too powerful for her relatively small body. Then, though, when I considered that my balance would be askew with her in my arms and falling into the freezing water was not an appealing thought, I decided to walk across with her beside me. As I took off my shoes, she ran around on the river bank, smelling the smells of nature that exist beyond my comprehension. When I stepped into the water to start across, I encouraged her to follow me. With no hesitation, she bounded toward me. I grabbed her collar, just in case she had problems. We started slowly, with her on the upstream side. As we neared the middle of the stream, the water flowed all the way over her back, pressing her body against my legs with all the force of the river behind her. Worried that she might become frantic, I looked at her to reassure her that I was there to grab her if the river became too powerful. When I did, I saw that she was smiling broadly, not the slightest bit concerned.
I’m not completely certain what that says about Zoie, or about our friendship. I like to believe that she completely trusted me and that she had no fear when we faced obstacles together. I know that she often made me forget the stressful things in life. If I returned the favor to her every now and then, as I may have on that spring day, I believe I have lived a fairly successful life so far. Regardless, it’s one of my favorite memories.
After Zoie got sick, and it became apparent that she was ultimately not going to win her fight, I read fairly extensively about the different approaches to disposing of animal remains. Jennifer and I discussed it and decided that cremation was the only logical choice for us. But when our vet called last Friday to say that Zoie’s remains were ready to be picked up, I was scared because we hadn’t discussed what to do with the ashes. The cremation service our veterinary uses returns them in a tasteful, wooden box that, if a person was inclined, could be displayed in a home. I’m not really into that, so I thought about where to spread the ashes. Kyles Landing came to mind almost immediately. I asked Jennifer and she agreed that there was no better place.
Because we both had Martin Luther King Day off from work, we decided that we would do it that day. Knowing that the meteorologists were predicting weather far too cold for comfortable camping, I made reservations for this past Sunday night at a Holiday Inn Express in nearby Harrison. After Jennifer got off work on Sunday, we packed up and drove north.
Sadie woke me early on Monday. When I took her outside and we were greeted with single digit temperatures and a cold wind, I was grateful that we hadn’t camped. After the normal morning stuff, we made the approximately thirty minute journey to Kyles Landing. When we arrived, we found the campground almost entirely deserted. I drove around the edge of it to a flat area along the river, near where Zoie and I had together crossed the river that spring day several years earlier. Jennifer pointed out the side window and said, “This is a pretty place.” I stopped the car and said, “Yeah, this is where I had in mind.”
As we got out of the car, I realized the temperature was even colder than it was in Harrison a couple of hours earlier. In passing, I noticed the austerity of the place. I don’t recall ever before being there in the middle of the winter. Still, it was no less beautiful. Jennifer and Sadie walked to the river while I retrieved Zoie’s ashes from the rear of the car. I put the box under one arm, zipped up my coat, and followed the ladies.
When I reached the edge of the river, Jennifer and I stood still for a few minutes, looked at the river, and took in the beauty. I thought about the times we had spent there with Zoie. Then we walked downstream a few hundred feet. When we started walking, I noticed that the river was frozen along its edge. The ice was thin, almost completely clear, and extended only about a foot from the shore. As we walked, Sadie moved from the shore to the ice and back again several times. In a couple of places, she broke through and got her feet and legs wet. I audibly warned her that she was going to be cold. She failed to heed my advice.
After walking around, full of dread about saying our final goodbye to Zoie, for almost thirty minutes, the three of us returned to the swift crossing. I took Zoie’s ashes out of the wood box. They were in a ziplock bag, with her full name written on the outside in Sharpie ink. As I held the ashes, Jennifer said some wonderfully beautiful and hopeful things to Zoie that I want to keep between the four of us. I didn’t say anything. Neither did Sadie; she just shivered. Even though tears were running down my face, I smiled at her and thought, “Told you so.”
When Jennifer finished, I walked across the top of several prominent rocks sticking out of the water to a point about eight or ten feet from the shore. I opened the ziplock bag and slowly poured Zoie’s ashes into the stream. The lighter, dust-like part of the ashes mixed with the water and created a light gray cloud that swirled about, cloud-like, and moved downstream with the water. Surprisingly, it was altogether lovely. Because of her grace in the water, I always loved to watch Zoie swim. It was almost as if God gave that joy to me one more time with the ash cloud.
Because the river is shallow this time of year and even the swiftest parts are not very powerful, the heavier sediment of the ashes settled onto the rocks of the riverbed. Jennifer asked if it would go downstream. I told her that it would eventually and pointed to the rounded edges of the rocks in the riverbed as an example of the water’s power. She seemed satisfied.
We left almost immediately. We both cried for most of the drive to the top of Mount Sherman. As we were topping the mountain, I looked into the valley toward Kyle’s Landing and said, “Goodbye Zoie.” When I did, I thought about how it had been almost exactly a week since Zoie died. I thought about how utterly sad I had been for most of the entire week, sometimes feeling like I couldn’t go on.
Then, finally, I thought about a conversation that I had with Zoie two nights before she died and decided that I had to start healing in earnest. Four days before she died, we had learned that her cancer had virtually taken over the right upper-quadrant of her body. The tumor had grown so large that it was compressing her ribs and lungs and was forcing her spine to bend sideways. Because of the location and the associated pain, virtually the only comfortable position for her was laying on her left side with her legs stretched in front of her. She was laying that way in our guest bed on the night we talked. I lay down behind her and stroked her head a few times. I put my nose against the soft hairs of her head, smelled her, and then whispered in her ear. I said, “You are a great dog. I’ve always loved you and I always will, no matter what happens. I know you have to go soon. It’s okay because, even though I will always miss you, I’ll be okay. I know that someday, sometime, someplace, we will see each other again.” I meant every word with all of my being.
