We use this graphic in the Mindfulness Foundations Course to illustrate how we tend to get complacent about the things we think we care about. I used ‘the necklace’ as an example for a few courses, but after today, I’ll use losing Biko as an example. Unless I get complacent about having found him again, and forget all about how it felt for a night and a morning to think he might be gone. Which was awful. A friend just this morning was talking about the phenomenon of hedonic adaptation, wherein we become acclimated to a new condition, a change in fortune, and over time our wellbeing goes back to its general resting state. It’s like when we forget to appreciate the non-toothache, and only notice that we were relatively painfree for awhile once we suddenly have pain again.

While we looked for him last night, and again for hours this morning, I did manage to appreciate the blooming maxis near the front gate. I looked behind them four or five times, since there’s a little divot in the ground where he’s hidden before, but nope, he was not there any time I looked. I was pretty sure that he was in the yard. It got dark last night, and I didn’t worry because I knew there were no holes in the fence, and sometimes he’s hard to find at dusk. Wren is so easily distracted these days by the sparrows in the rosebush, and now the finches at the feeder.

I poked around with my walking pole in the thick grass under the apricot tree. With all the fallen leaves his camouflage shell might not show up. I even lengthened the pole so I could poke to the bottom of the pond a few places where I couldn’t see beneath the plants and algae, just in case. We looked for about half an hour last night, forty-five minutes before work this morning, and another hour before lunch while the sun hinted through cloud cover. We looked absolutely everywhere, and even walked the perimeter outside the fence. I knew there was a slim chance someone might have come in the gate and left it open while I was out half the day yesterday: even just long enough to walk down to the door, knock, and wait a couple minutes, if it was sunny and he was active and near the gate, he could have walked right out with no one the wiser. But it was a slim chance, and I didn’t panic. I wouldn’t have worried at all in summer, confident that when the sun came out he’d emerge from hiding to bask, and I’d catch him running around later in the day. But the forecast for the next few days was not conducive to his coming out: possible heavy rain through the weekend, and on Sunday an overnight low that could spell the end of him. So we had to find him, and I didn’t want to be out looking in a downpour later.

It would take a gap this size beneath the fence for him to escape, and there just isn’t one along the perimeter. This gap is between the garden and the yarden, and those are his footprints: he uses it regularly to come and go from the area where his dogloo provides frequent overnight shelter. It’s where Wren found him on Wednesday night, but not last night. I triple checked. I checked both corners in the shoddy shed where he’s sometimes tucked in, and lifted the cardboard box he used before it collapsed, but he wasn’t under it.

However, after looking literally everywhere else in the yard, and triple checking the dog pen and garden, I went back to the broken cardboard box and lifted it all the way up, not just the front end–and there he was! Oh the wave of gratitude I felt in that moment! It washed away all my pending grief at possibly losing him.

To be clear, Wren did not find him. I found him, she was nowhere near, off chasing sparrows. But I put the box back over him and called her, and then she found him. To her mind, she had succeeded after our long and arduous hunt, and it was important to her to feel that she’d found him at last. We were both delighted and grateful, and moved Biko, some dried rushes, and the box all to the round pen to recreate his cozy bed, so he could tuck in for the rest of the season and I’d always know where to find him when it’s time to bring him inside. For the moment, his value is as high as it’s ever been.

I’m thinking there may be a lot of people who don’t realize how much they value Democracy just now, and what an ugly surprise it will be for them if it comes to pass that they wake up one day and we no longer have one. It’s certainly the direction this regime is trending, and the source of pervasive grief for many, but it’s not yet a done deal. If we act together, each of us doing our little things every day, but all of us coming together over and over in grassroots groups and other communities, resisting as a population instead of lone individuals, then we can still stem the creeping red tide. This short interview with Rebecca Solnit inspires the hope that remains for all of us if we come together in determined resistance.

An Irish farmer I follow on Instagram highlighted this trick to refresh rusted garden shears, and I’ve used this jar of vinegar to soak three pruners, about twelve hours each. The vinegar bubbles and the rust just falls off! Then you scrub them clean of vinegar and they’re ready to sharpen and good as new. It’s time to soak the Supreme Court and Congress in vinegar. Here’s a list of links I shared with North Fork Indivisible this morning. I hope some of them inspire or at least interest you.