In Memory of Blaze
February 1998
April 27th, 2013
I wasn’t considering another dog. Just over a year earlier I had to put down my twelve year old dog named Katie; telling myself never again.
We had our first encounter on a hot summer afternoon. It was Sunday, August 31st, 1998. The temperature that day was 103 F. She was desperate for food and water; a six month old stray in need of a friend.
I provided this lost little dog a drink of cool water from the hose and gave her a crust of bread which she literally inhaled. While she continued to drink I retrieved another slice of bread and to my surprise she took it to the back yard and buried it for a later time. I thought to myself, Smart dog. She didn’t know when she would eat again and while she was in great need she chose to save it.
Under the shade of two large elm trees I petted and spoke to her hoping to provide some assurance. We were bonding. The next step was to allow her in my home.
Upon entering she vigorously began to sniff everywhere possible remnants of Katie’s scent. I let her go about the business of familiarizing herself with a new environment. Meanwhile I was considering what to do. Keep her, don’t keep her; regardless I decided to take her to a friend’s veterinary clinic first thing Monday morning, while still pondering the bigger question.
My home had grown silent. Where was she? What was she into? I started my search, first the basement--no dog. I returned upstairs looking behind chair and under tables, nothing. I entered my bedroom turned on a light and there she was asleep in my bed her head on my pillow. Smart and sweet the decision was made, she would be my responsibility. She had found a home.
In December I retired from real estate committed to follow my dream of creative expression.
She was given the name Blaze both for the white marking on her chest and for the fact that together we were blazing a new trail through life.
Blaze was my constant companion for nearly 15 years. Traveling on numerous photographic adventures, often on the road for weeks or months at a time. She loved everyone she met, always friendly, never destructive. Her loving personality and strong spirit remain with me.
Phillip Carver
Quotations
” The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
Henry David Thoreau
“… uplifted into infinite space…I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the
Universal Being circulate through me.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The interpreters of nature are the true and only priests: let us flood the world
with intellectual light.”
Robert Green Ingersoll
“People are always trying to put photographers in a niche
and categorize them.”
Dorothea Lange
“When the photograph is a mirror of the man and the man
is a mirror of the world, then spirit might take over.”
Minor White
“The photographs that excite me are photographs that say
something in a new manner; not for the sake of being
different, but ones that are different because the individual
is different…to do it, see it, in a different way.”
Harry Callahan
