One

I was born and raised in the desert. Like most desert plants and animals, I love rain. I live for rain. I live because of rain. Rain heals me, as it heals and seals the cracked floors of sunbaked arroyos and limestone canyon walls. It peels back the membranes of seedpods, freeing them to the warm winds and porous soils to replant and grow—shallow rooted and thin bodied. Rain plumps up cactus flesh, sending a moist exhale of rescue breaths down the throats of desiccated, sweat-caked desert dwellers whose minds petrify as they stare intently into the flames of mesquite barbecues. This collective gasp sweeps across the land. This forced air is said to be the origin of the infamous haboob, the monumental respiration of all living things in the desert when the rain clouds roll in and the infernal sun is finally blotted out. You probably didn’t know this, did you? The power of breath in the desert. In close proximity to sand and the earth’s core, breath is powerful. The air is heavy. Rain rehabilitates the desert world.

As a girl growing up addicted to biannual rain seasons in Tucson, Arizona—summer monsoons and winter maintenance rains—I loved rain so much, I decided to name my first-born human child Rain. Someday. When I had one. Then someday became today and I didn’t have a human child, but instead, an immense love for wild things. For displaced wild animals. For the canines that walk the line between domestic and wild, not knowing their sure place, and for many reasons I will get to later, I can relate to these animals. The world made us as we are—compatible and cohesive—to gravitate together in a realm of dire solidarity, to pack up and survive. To thrive. And so I began to rescue wolf dogs in danger of euthanasia from the animal shelter. My first feral female I, of course,  named Rain.

Rain arrived. There was nothing seasonal about her, accept that she arrived with the monsoons, and she was weathered. Withered. Scrawny, her fur matted and full of parasites. In spite of this, she was beautiful. A spirit animal from another dimension. A small, white, yellow-eyed, large-toothed wolf. When I took her home from the shelter and bathed her, she howled, she gnawed, she clawed me. She was so malnourished, most of her sinewy fur fell out. She had the beginning stages of an Upper Respiratory Infection (Kennel Cough), I could tell from the sniffles and runny nose. She fought me, just enough to show will, but she was tired. I lathered her up and scrubbed her down, as she finally submitted, stiff as a board. Fight or flight had passed, Rain was in shock and submission. The pre-stages of learning to trust and simply breathe in the desert.

When I finished, she stared blankly at the drain—immobile, hairless, eyes on fire, skinny legs and all. I wrapped a towel around her and lifted her from the elevated tub, her legs sticking straight out, all 35 pounds of her emaciated frame. Her hip and shoulder bones pierced my hands, leaving a lasting impression. I dried her gently with the towel, then set to clipping matted fur from her with scissors and feeding her tiny pieces of dried fish. This, I would soon find, was her element. Soaked to the bone and devouring protein. It would take months before Rain would gaze upon me with her full moon eyes, but she was already beginning to feel me. To lean into me and fight less. And it wasn’t long after that, Rain was running, racing me into the revelation of ethology and the genius of all things wild.

We hit the roads. Rain darted every which way like a minnow, petrified of my footfalls. Each forward step I took, she took two to the side. I finally let her off leash and she began to follow. We also had Shooter, my male Mexican wolf mix and confident alpha in any pack, leading the way for us. Shooter found me in the back country wilderness of the Tonto National Forest, as a young pup. But that story is also for another chapter. It was Rain—as Rain needed the rehabbing—that growled and lunged at Shooter, conditioned from her first year of life as a stray in the streets of South Tucson, to fight off all competition for resources. And I was her number one resource now. But Shooter saw her as damaged and not worthy of his time, snorting into the air with disapproval. So I ran between them. We took to the washes—in between floods—dodging Diamond Backs and chasing rabbits. And the monsoon rains fell. Every afternoon into the evening, like clockwork. It was an El Niño year, and the satiating season for rehabbing Rain had begun.