I was a visitor for the dingos, to observe, to get to know the boys, to be circled around their fire. The winter on the high desert plane was there mid January and the night wind howled a spoken tone we all heard and huddled closer to the jumping flames. A bed of three inch thick coals glowing red made a foundation for the stainless steel cups each dingo had placed there. The cups landed precariously in the burning embers. Some tettering a bit, water spilling over the rim hitting the coals below and a puff of steam rising then gone as soon as it had appeared. Other cups were placed gently with gloved hand, twisted and nested into tiny blocks of glowing juniper. The razzing voices of teenage wit surrounded the flames and adult guides smiled while listening to the conversations unfold.
The teacher was there and I saw it clearly, sometimes manifested in the form of a stern father figure and sometimes the teacher was manifested in the form of a compassionate mother figure. And over the decades I have seen the teacher with countless combinations of traits depending on the lesson to be taught. The teacher is always there and this night the dingos had awkwardly stumbled into her class room, all of them unprepared, many against their will, but led by guides who had been through her classes before.
The clouds parted and revealed a full moon in the eastern sky casting shadows upon the desert floor. This was a moment the teacher smiled upon us with joy from the broken clouds above and the dingoes remained in chatter, stirring cups of boiling soups with random juniper branches and whittled spoons with rude and splintered edges. Somewhere far away from the dingo camp a human father and mother, under the same full moon thought of their youth in the winter landscape of the Utah desert and the teacher sent a gentle light beam and it landed on their son, and his friends, and his wilderness guides while they laughed at each other’s company and took hot soup from the friendly fire and I watched them warm their bellies in the moonlight.
