‘Angel’s Landing’

Asma Ejaz is a photographer by hobby and her work explores themes of curated environments and striking contrast often highlighting a juxtaposition of elements. She discovered her skill and passion for the art through mere coincidence and the keen eye of her colleagues. Though an ameture in the field, her work was one of the driving forces in garnering an online audience for the launch of HiDubai.

Angel’s Landing

I sat at the base of his favorite oak tree, where the spiraling roots rose from the ground, fighting the grass. Quiet tears slipped from the sky, as if it too, was experiencing loss. The rich scent of eucalyptus and wet dirt filled the forest. I could almost make out the hazy image of my dad’s ghost, sitting beside me in the dense fog, but it vanished while a single tear escaped, sliding down my right cheek. His laughter would’ve filled the chilly morning air with undeniable warmth.

I didn’t have a single memory of my mother since she’d passed when I was eight months old, but I had a photo album full of perfectly preserved pictures, thanks to my dad. When I was seven, he spontaneously decided we needed a dog. We skipped work and school that day, feigning food poisoning. He held my always-cold hand as we collected anything and everything we could possibly need from the pet store. At the shelter, supplies in hand, we adopted a recently skunked little brown dog. He looked like an under-blended smoothie of small breeds. Sherlock lived until my second semester of undergrad. When that dog died, it broke us both. My dad had a monopoly on empathy. He kept an old, accidentally washed picture of Sherlock and me, in his wallet.

My dad was there whenever I needed him despite raising me without any living relatives. He made so many traditions that, as a child, I thought every family did. We had scheduled dance parties every other Friday night and at least once a month, we’d attend an actual dance class. I don’t remember the dances, but I remember the laughter and the way my chest burned with the purest joy. He made sure I knew that my voice was valuable and taught me to question everybody, which also inadvertently caused my suspension in the fifth grade when I’d questioned a teacher’s qualifications and then deemed him unfit to teach me. My dad never failed to make sure I knew how proud of me he was, always showing up with apt enthusiasm to my high school, college, and law school graduations. At each succeeding graduation, he’d managed to wrangle a larger, more outrageous balloon and flower bouquet. By the time I was out of law school, he’d brought so many balloons and flowers that I wondered how he’d managed to wrestle them into his car because it didn’t fit into mine at the end of the night.

A cacophony of chirps sounded in the treetops, the forest began to wake, and I was pulled from my memories. A squirrel scampered across the ground, making me jump. Stanley, the eighteen-year-old half blind dachshund, barreled through the bushes, barking. His little red body, speckled with salt and pepper, stopped a few feet from me. He jerked his head right and left trying to relocate the squirrel. His wire hair was haphazardly fluffed in every direction.

“Stanley,” I called. He ignored me, gluing his nose to the ground. The squirrel leapt from the bush and raced up the tree I was leaning against. Stanley barked frantically and toppled over my legs whilst trying to circle the tree. He scrambled back up on his feet and resumed circling before he seemed to give up. Re-gluing his nose to the ground, his tail wagged as he meandered around. Stanley was a shelter dog, my favorite out of all the ones I walked on the weekends. I’d asked to borrow him that morning. Jennifer, the director at the animal shelter, said I could keep him as long as I needed.

I desperately clung to the urn. I promised myself that I was going to finally do it today, exactly a year since his passing.

I took a big inhale and blew out the breath. I stood. My hand tingled while I uncapped the urn. The sensation spread up my arm like tentacles of smoke encircling my heart. I forced myself to tip the urn, releasing the last piece of my dad in his favorite spot. A weight pressed down on my chest. I held my breath.

There were so many milestones to come that my dad wouldn’t be there for. I could never call him again. I would never hear his voice again, his laughter, and that perhaps, is what broke my heart most of all.

Stanley’s wandering nose hit my foot and he glanced up at me as if to say, “how did you get there?” Something about his demeanor drew me to him since he’d arrived at the shelter almost a year ago.

Stanley heard the soft whooshing of the ashes falling and jerked his head up, suddenly at attention. Trotting across the ground, he sniffed where the ashes dusted the ground. He inhaled, paused for a second, and then licked the ground where I’d just put my dad to rest. I think I was in shock because I just stood there. He gagged and spit up. Laughter bubbled up my throat, hysterical and tragic all at once.

I sat back down against the oak tree. Stanley perkily came over, unfazed by his encounter with my dad’s ashes. He looked at me, staring directly into my soul. Clumsily, he climbed into my lap, perching his paws on my sternum. I gently pet the soft fur on his back and he licked away a tear from my cheek. I gagged and pushed him down. He jumped right back up, relentlessly trying to lick the salty liquid from my face.

“Ah, Stanley, no,” I said. He harrumphed and let out a huge sigh, before finally curling up in my lap.

Streaks of light broke through the canopy of treetops, illuminating golden particles in the air. We stayed like that until the sun had risen and the fog dissipated.

***

We arrived back at the shelter in the early afternoon. Jennifer was at the front desk. Papers were splayed haphazardly all over, a few had fallen to the ground and had shoe prints on them. Stanley rested in my arms, showing no interest in moving. Jennifer glanced up from a laptop she was typing on and offered me a small smile.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, Sarah, how’d it go?” she asked.

“As well as can be expected.” I shrugged.

Jennifer nodded, smiling softly. Her smile lit up her brown eyes that always radiated warmth. She shuffled through some papers on the counter, distracted.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “You seem, I don’t know, off.”

“I- it’s,” she said. “It’s Stanley.” Her shoulders lifted and fell while she let out a heavy breath. I frowned. Seconds ticked on and she remained silent.

“Has he been adopted?”

Her expression instantly told me no. “He’s not adoptable anymore. We just got his recent health exam results back.”

“Weren’t you supposed to get that three weeks ago? After almost a year here?” I asked.

Stanley’s owner had died and there was no family to take him. He’d become a favorite at the shelter, but it was rare that people came to the shelter to adopt a senior dog. Stanley had been on the streets with tags to the deceased. We were the same in that way—orphaned.

“Yeah, you know how it works here. Everything takes way longer as it should. But no, Stanley hasn’t been adopted. He… I’m sorry. I hate to make your already bad day worse. I know you’ve been dealing with a lot since losing your dad and.. Stanley has terminal cancer. I’ve been trying to find a rescue to take him for hospice, but no one has room. He’s getting put down tomorrow.”

“I’ll take him.” I blurted before my conscious brain could catch up. I didn’t have the right house. I had an overpriced, tiny apartment on the eighth floor surrounded by concrete in downtown San Francisco. I couldn’t even picture the closest patch of dirt. Jennifer paused for a long moment. The quiet buzz of the LED lights overhead felt like nails on a chalkboard. I wondered if she could see my thoughts racing.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said.

Stanley slept through the rest of the encounter, snoring and dream-howling quietly in my arms. He seemed pleasantly surprised to be placed in the passenger seat of my car instead of a shelter cage. His long nose tilted up while his brown eyes locked with mine as if he was completely aware of what was happening. I felt like crying, but shoved it down.

***

When we arrived at my apartment, Stanley perked up. I placed his wriggling body on the cherry hardwood floor. He glued his nose to the ground and scouted every inch of my one-bedroom for any possible intruders or squirrels that could’ve been lurking in the shadows.

I collapsed on my sofa. A siren sounded outside my window and Stanley trotted into the living room, standing at high alert, listening to the sound fade. He licked his chops, puttered over to the sofa, leapt from the ground onto my gut. His little paws hit me like daggers, but I still reached over to help his dangling legs up the rest of the way. As he shook, he nearly toppled to the floor. My stomach could not take any more dagger paws. I lifted him and sat upright, placing him next to me on the sofa. I swear he frowned at me before quickly climbing into my lap and curling up.

“Okay, buddy, whatever you want,” I said.

Despite his unconventional character, he was exactly what I needed. My thoughts played the day my dad died on repeat. I couldn’t shake the cycle with the exception of moments with Stanley where he pulled my mind to present with a resounding bark. I shouldn’t have been so focused on school and my career. He lived twenty minutes from me, but I barely saw him once every few months. It was in a grocery store that he died, alone. One second, he was there and the next he was gone when the brain aneurysm stopped his heart. People around me kept moving as if the world hadn’t stopped turning. I suppose for them, it didn’t.

Stanley stood up and readjusted in my lap to lay on his other side. He settled as I stroked the length of his back.

My dad kept a box of reminders on his kitchen counter, it was the only thing of his that I hadn’t gone through yet. A list of things to do, ideas for his lectures, or grocery lists that would never be completed because the author was gone. He was a philosophy professor at the University of San Francisco. The school had had a memorial for him after he passed, but I couldn’t bring myself to go. I was still in shock and wasn’t ready to see anyone.

In the weeks following his passing, I threw myself into my work which I now see, thanks to the repetition of my therapist, was an effort to avoid dealing with it at all. My dad wasn’t gone if I didn’t have time to stop and think about it. I pulled out the brown unmarked box from under the sofa where it had sat untouched for a year. Stanley sat up which wasn’t a great elevation with his short legs.

Hesitantly, I opened the lid to find a box full of sticky notes as expected. Shuffling through them, picking up one random note and returning it to the box to find another just like it. I pulled out a few pictures of the two of us. I found one of the more recent pictures that we’d taken together when we’d gone on a hiking trip in Muir Woods. The two of us stood in front of a towering redwood tree smiling ear to ear. Stanley pressed his nose to the picture and licked my fingers. I smiled down at him and put the picture aside to pet his head. He nuzzled into my hand in appreciation.

I continued flipping through the rest of the notes. Most of them were exactly what I expected except one bright pink sticky note—the only of its color. It read: Zion National Park, Angel’s Landing. He had never mentioned hiking that particular trail, but I knew he always wanted to go to Zion. My heart broke all over again knowing that he never made it there. I couldn’t help but blame myself. He’d kept trying to plan another trip with me in the months leading up to his passing, but I’d been so focused on making partner that I told him I couldn’t take time off work.

Now, I wished I could alter the timeline, his timeline or at least go back and smack myself awake. I’d tell myself to spend more time with him, to appreciate him and memorize every silly joke he ever told. I could already feel the dad jokes fading from my tangled web of memory.

I’d always been a very calculated person, someone who played the long game of life—doing things now that would make my future easier. I just had yet to reach that period in my life. I had never made decisions on a whim or without proper thought and consideration. So, when after only moments of seeing that note I decided I was going to take time off work and go there, it was quite uncharacteristic.

It was a compulsion as if I had no choice but to go. There was no reasonable explanation for the feeling, but I knew Stanley would enjoy it and that was enough for me. I booked plane tickets for the following day to St. George, Utah. It wasn’t a very popular destination so last-minute flights were not hard to come by. I booked an extra seat so that Stanley would have room and paid the pet carrier fee. I packed a small duffle bag before I crawled into bed and watched mindless tv.

Stanley snuggled into bed with me that night. I’d fallen asleep with him snuggled against my chest and woken to find him sleeping inside my oversized nightshirt with his head poking out of the neck opening under my chin. I carefully maneuvered him out of my shirt and left him snuggled under the comforter where he promptly fell back asleep. I snatched my phone from the nightstand and called the shelter’s veterinarian office. After a few minutes of arguing with the front desk clerk, I finally got the vet on the phone. I considered myself a somewhat decent lawyer.

“I’m aware of his colon cancer. I need to know his projected life expectancy. I also need to know if he’s in any pain? Does he need pain meds?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, it’s very hard to pinpoint an exact time frame for this sort of thing so my estimate wouldn’t be much more than an educated guess. But if I had to guess, I’d say he has three to five weeks to live. As far as pain is concerned, he didn’t appear to be in any pain when I examined him. If you feel like he needs pain meds, you can come pick a prescription today or anytime in the future.”

“If I feel like? How am I supposed to know?”

His answer also sounded preposterous. I wasn’t an animal whisperer. What the hell did I know about animal pain? I’d had three dogs in my life and they were all under the primary care of my dad who was incredibly intuitive.

“Animal pain can present in many different forms. You’ll usually notice that they become restless. Or they start straying from their usual behavioral pattern in terms of energy and overall demeanor. Panting can also be a sign of pain if they’re not hot. Does that help?”

I took a calming breath, appreciating his answer. I folded the throw blanket that I’d used last night on my sofa and placed it carefully on the back of the sofa in a triangle shape exactly how I’d designed my space.

***

It was only a couple hours later that I found myself at the airport with Stanley in a duffle bag carrier. I cautiously held his carrier where he laid happily with a soft blanket and the little duck toy I’d bought him. I had gotten a handful of toys that took up about a third of my bag. I wanted to be sure that Stanley had anything he could ever want. I wondered what his life was like before we met. I wondered what his old guardian did with him. I could imagine them hiking and going to dog parks on a regular basis so Stanley could get his fill of all the scents the world had to offer. We stood in line to board the plane, hordes of people crowded around us. I cradled Stanley’s carrier in my arms so when he sneezed, I was blessed enough to be the recipient of little mucus droplets on my shirt.

Stanley shook and smiled up at me. I was fully convinced he was smiling at that point. His big brown eyes stared thoughtfully into mine. I could feel his excitement pulsing through his expression. He was so innocently happy. He had no idea that he wouldn’t live much longer. I wondered if my dad was happily shopping and planning to cook some fun new recipe he’d seen on the cooking channel. I wondered what his last thoughts were, his last words, his–

“Ma’am,” the attendant said loudly.

I jerked my head up and shook off the haze that had clouded my mind.

“Yes, coming, thank you,” I said.

“You may board,” she said after scanning my ticket, and I descended the boarding ramp.

“Thank you.”

***

It was around noon when we made it to our destination at the trailhead for Angel’s Landing. Zion so far had been a blur of wondrous fiery red stone mountains that seemed to glow in the bright spring sunlight. It felt like an alien planet with trees and various shrubs growing right out of the sandstone. I’d never seen any landscape like it on the many adventures I’d had with my dad. Somehow, I felt closer to my dad while I stood there with my hiking boots pressing down on the red sand. I could imagine his reaction to this place, the childish wonder that would overtake his expression. I tilted my head to the blue sky where I could make out the mountaintop that was Angel’s Landing.

It was a four and half mile hike almost entirely uphill. My eyes shifted to the switchbacks carved into the mountainside directly in front of me. I could see a few people at various heights on them. The higher up they looked, the more they looked like ants in an observation tank where there is an innumerable network of tunnels. Greenery speckled the mountain like someone had splattered paint across the side of it.

Stanley trotted out in front me and was stopped abruptly by his new black mesh harness and the leash that was attached to my wrist. He paused for a few heartbeats, confused. He shook his body as if that would return his freedom. His long ears flapped loudly as he shook and then he tried again but was snapped back by the harness.

“Stanley,” I cooed.

He looked back at me as if to communicate that he was busy trying to move forward and would address my concerns at a later date. He jerked at the end of the harness again.

“Pal, the leash is for your own safety.”

I knelt down and he trotted back to me without any lost enthusiasm. I stroked the wiry red hair on his head softly. His coat worked as a great camouflage in the landscape. He licked my hand in thanks and then repeated the motion of trying to use the force of his little body to break out of the constraints. That was our hike for the first fifteen minutes until Stanley came to grips with the circumference that he had to work with around me. Taking full advantage of it, he circled me as we climbed, his nose glued to the auburn surface.

The switchbacks toward the start of the trailhead were carved out of the mountain in a staircase as if for a giant who would simply take one switchback as a step. However, the further we ascended the more switchbacks were carved into the mountain like the ant trail. Each switchback had rocky surfaces above our heads as well as a mix of sand and stone in the four foot wide ground beneath us. There was no railing even as we got higher and the fall from those heights would surely be the death of anyone. I always opted to stay on the mountainside of them when passing other hikers. People passing by us tried to say hi to Stanley, but he was uninterested in other people. It was an interesting thing to see because I had just assumed he was friendly with everyone considering how attention-oriented he was with me.

Stanley stopped looping me after a while, his steps became slower. We paused at the end of one of the switchbacks where the space between us and the drop-off was almost twice its usual distance. I pulled the multi-purpose backpack/baby carrier in front of me and took out a collapsible water bowl and poured some water in. Stanley’s ears perked up when he heard the water trickling into the bowl. He drank. Carrying him, I continued on, but he soon began wriggling in my arms and I placed him back on the ground. I slowed my pace to match his.

As we got closer to the top, Stanley’s exuberant pace turned into slow small steps and then a few trotting steps. He was fighting exhaustion. I stopped and scooped him off the ground carefully. I put him in the baby carrier and clipped his harness to the built-in buckle. He seemed content to ride like that with his little paws dangling limply from the leg holes. I gave him one of the pain-killers that the vet had given me along with a treat, he left a healthy helping of slobber on my offering hand.

It was another hour before we reached close to the top of the summit where I had to walk on narrow red boulders with a significant cliff-drop on either side. A chain had been bolted into the ground with metal rods that were also secured to the stone. Stanley licked me from his spot in the baby carrier. I smiled down at him, tightening my ponytail. I checked the straps of the carrier to make sure it was still secure before grabbing the chain and carefully maneuvering myself along the edge.

My whole body jerked when I felt a hand on the small of my back. I almost lost my balance, but quickly steadied myself gripping the chain tightly. Irritated, I turned to see a man smiling at me.

“Get your hand off of me, now!” I ordered.

He removed his hand from my back but kept the nonchalant smile.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

“I was just helping you. You don’t look experienced,” he said. And that was the end of any patience I might’ve had with him. He looked to be mid-twenties if I had to guess, but I didn’t care how old he was. His ignorance and resulting behavior were inexcusable.

“I don’t look experienced? What does that mean? Because I don’t fit your idea of what experienced should look like? Do tell, oh brilliant one, what does an experienced person look like? You? I don’t think so. That’s the most misogynistic thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Wake up to the twenty-first century. Do not touch someone without—” I said.

“Statistically–” The man tried to interrupt me. He had the audacity to think his opinion was most important.

“I don’t give a damn about your statistics. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re speaking out of ignorance. You made an assumption which is called conjecture in a court of law and is thrown out because it has no basis in fact. Do not touch me. I don’t want or need your help. Back off before you have a lawsuit on your hands.”

He raised his hands defensively, palms open. He scoffed and shook his head like he couldn’t believe I’d say anything about his unnecessary and completely unwarranted “help.” He backed off after that and didn’t come within fifteen feet of me which was much preferred. It was unfortunately a far too common interaction for me, where a man overstepped and then thought I was the crazy one because I didn’t want to be touched by some stranger.

We moved cautiously to the end of the outlook that was the mountaintop deemed “Angel’s Landing.” All thoughts of the man faded then as I took in everything around me. The sun still illuminated the breathtaking landscape below. The red rock mountains encapsulated an entire ecosystem, entirely unique in and of itself. A blue river cut the mountains in half and everything on either side of it was a vibrant green hue. Trees sprouted on little cliff edges. I thought about how they had likely never been touched by humans. An eagle flew over the river below, cawing as it soared. Stanley perked up and lifted his nose to sniff the air. There were a couple groups of people mostly huddled together. I stood on a rock a few feet from the edge.

The outstretched mountain underfoot was all red stone; the view looked like it belonged only to the angels. It almost felt like I was intruding on their sanctuary. Yet, simultaneously, it felt like I was purview to something beyond myself.

I reached in the front pocket of the backpack that held Stanley and pulled out the picture of my dad and me. My eyes flooded with everything I had tried to suppress for the last year. My dad smiled brightly from the picture. It was like I could hear his laughter floating on the soft breeze. I could sense him in the beauty of the scenery, in the fresh air that he loved so much. He was everywhere all around me.

“I miss you,” I choked out in a whisper. “I love you so much.”

My heart squeezed as I finally let all the grief out of the box I’d shoved it into. It consumed my chest cavity like a tsunami. Stanley, with his soft sniffing, was my only anchor to reality in those few moments.

“I know I have to say goodbye. I just don’t know how. You were the best dad anyone could ask for. So, I’m not going to say goodbye. I’m just going to see you later because I won’t accept that I’ll never see you again. I have to tap into a little bit of that faith you had and believe that I’ll see you again… Say hi to mom for me, okay?”

***

When I got back to my apartment, there was a woman standing outside the lobby doors.

“Sarah?” she asked.

I startled, clutching Stanley to my chest. He was unbothered. The woman was unfamiliar to me, her brown eyes were soft and kind against her olive skin. She looked old enough to be my mother.

“Stanley?” She frowned at the dog bundled in my arms. I took a step back, away from the doors to my building.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m Mira, I was seeing your father before he passed. I—” she paused, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Stanley perked up, looking her up and down, wagging his tail.

“My dad wasn’t seeing anyone,” I said.

“We were going to tell you, but then he… Well, he passed. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to seek you out.”

Stanley squirmed furiously in my arms. I finally had to put him down for fear of dropping him. He tugged to the end of the leash to greet Mira. Stanley knew her.

“How do you know Stanley?” I asked.

Mira frowned up at me. “He was your dad’s dog. Isn’t that how you ended up with him?”

“No, I got him from the shelter, his owner passed—” It wasn’t possible. The fragile hold I had on my emotions slipped and my eyes welled. “He was my dad’s?”

“Yes, honey, he was,” Mira said.

Christin Karr graduated from Pepperdine with a BA in Creative Writing as Valedictorian. She received a fellowship for the University of San Francisco for her MFA in Writing. Her education has given her opportunities to work with established writers including Pulitzer Prize winners whose work she hopes to emulate.