By Dr. Naomi Wolf
Outspoken
April 23, 2025
I promised, after having nearly died in a hospital the summer before last, to write the things I wanted never to write.
I've almost kept my promise. But there are a few stories left unspoken; that catch in my throat. This is one of them.
You, dear reader, remember our beloved little dog, the late Mushroom.
He joined our family when I had recently become a single mom with two small children - that most vulnerable, most raw, most wary of identities; that state most in need of a friend and protector. Mushroom stayed with us for eighteen years; companion, guardian; cranky black-and-white angel; fluffball, comforter; peevish, silent commentator on events.
Loki, our new pup, is a freshly-minted baby spirit. He wriggles, barely able to contain himself, and is agog with the wonder of everything on Earth.
Mushroom, on the contrary, was like an elderly Edwardian uncle who reads the paper in a dressing gown and slippers, and gazes upon the scene with a jaded eye.
You can barely escape Loki's puppy-hugs and kisses; but one had to patiently seek out a cuddle from Mushroom. It would be a fulfilling moment when he condescended to lay his wiry head upon your knee, or, his preferred move, to curl up, lying half on your lap and half on the keyboard of the laptop, blocking the screen on which the family was trying to watch a movie.
Mushroom always had a bit of a metaphysical role, I felt, in our family's life. He always seemed like an irascible, chunky, treats-seeking gift from God - a small warm scruffy being, whose job from the start seemed to be to make sure that no one in our household would ever be too lonely, too sad, or too overwhelmed.
You already know that when Mushroom died at last, here in the woods, something happened that we could not, still cannot, possibly explain. I described it in my essay "What is A Miracle?" A perfect, long-stemmed red rose appeared, floating in the river by our house, in the depths of winter, as Mushroom lay dying. That rose stayed, perfect, unmoving, hovering an inch or two under the surface of the ice-clear, rushing waters, for days; it remained suspended through the day that Mushroom died, and it lingered under the waters, held aloft by nothing, for days thereafter.
When the rose released its petals at last, what remained behind were two slender tree-trunks, that had caught themselves on a raised bed of sand within the torrents of the river. These had resolved into the shape of a man-sized cross; and though winter was all around us, a tangle of greenery lay at its cross-section.
Looking back, I see that I'd under-narrated the wonder of this. At the time I wrote that essay, a couple of years ago, I did not want to tackle the miraculous head-on, because - well, all of the reasons.
People who have advanced degrees, I was raised to believe, are not supposed to experience miracles, let alone to narrate them.
The miraculous, I was taught, is in poor taste.
But - but - I've changed since then.
And that miraculous rose was not the only impossible event that we experienced in relation to Mushroom.
In about 2018, my husband Brian was working as a private investigator for a client who was the leader of a Native American tribe. His work took him to the tribe's vast, pristine reservation, which extended for hundreds of acres over the fruit-bearing lowlands, and over the regal mountain highlands, of Yakima County, Washington State.
I visited Brian sometimes while he was working; I'd stay in chain hotels on the outer edge of the reservation, and read and write, and explore the slightly depressed, but still charming, downtown of Yakima. I would admire its 1890s train-depot-turned-cafe; the 1940s lettering describing apples and cherries that was still visible on whitewashed brick fruit-warehouse walls; the neighborhoods of run-down but still beautiful Craftsman bungalows; the town's echoing brick saloons, left over from the boom times of the early 20th century.
Low black sand hills rise up at the far ends of long flat avenues; the jail, still in use, stands right in the center of town, almost directly across from the train tracks. Feathery cottonwoods fan a little creek that runs, beyond the Target and the Planet Fitness and the parking lots, across the flat, tawny-dirt, high-desert outskirts of the little city. Birds of prey - raptors - cougars, coyotes, and snakes, inhabit those flatlands.
The fruit in that valley was so abundant that in the summertime, gas stations sold, for pennies a pound, cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, and strawberries, all so cheap because they were on the very edge of overripeness, so un-transportable.
In July, Brian and I would buy parcels of golden, and then golden-red, and then later still, nearly black cherries, wrapped up in newspapers, enclosed in turn in plastic. We'd make a picnic table from the spread-out wrappings on the bed of our hotel room, as we had no table. We'd unveil and pile up the fruit, and admire its glowing colors; and eat it as a red sun sank slowly between the low black mountains.
On one trip, we decided to drive, rather than fly, across the country. One reason was so we could bring Mushroom with us. He was very elderly by then, and could not see well, but he was still a good traveller. Brian liked to take Mushroom out of the car at various truck stops along the way, so that our little, elderly dog could lift his head, and smell the air and dirt and grass in different states.
On this journey, a colleague of Brian's who lived locally offered us his home; he and his family would be away. We gratefully accepted. We were excited to have a house, so Mushroom, and we, would be more comfortable. It would be nice to have a kitchen, a living room. A backyard.
We made our way to the house, on the outskirts of town, near the base of the black mountains.
The area where the pretty, modest, one-story wooden house stood, was partly suburban, and part desert wasteland. In patches, it was also agricultural. There were a few suburban streets, with low ranch style houses; in empty fields stood battered barns; and there was that tawny sand, that seemed to be its own disorienting dimension. The sandy fields seemed to go both everywhere and nowhere.
There was something a bit vertiginous about the neighborhood; the air, the perspectives.
Dimensions, for example, were hard to judge. Were the mountains moderately high and very close nearby, or were they vast, and very far away? Did the sand stretch for acres, or for acres upon acres? Was it burning hot, or icy cold, or both at once? It all felt a bit surreal.
I thought of the Carlos Castaneda books, starting with The Teachings of Don Juan, about Yacqui shamanism, that I had read as a teenager - accounts of places and times in which things changed from the everyday to the surreal and back, in a heartbeat, and in which such changes were taken for granted.
Something unusual was the menagerie that our hostess, Brian's colleague's young wife, had assembled. The animals were sheltered in a penned area outside the house.
We had gone to look, at the invitation of our hosts, before they had given us the keys and left. There was a spotless miniature red barn, with a goat-pen, and a chicken coop, inside.
The interior of the goat-pen revealed six or seven baby goats — brown, white and dappled — and a couple of grown she-goats. The baby goats showed off -- racing around and leaping in the air; one tiny goat would actually jump on the low divider that separated the goat-pen from the yard, and balance on its little black hooves for a few moments, as if to say: Look at me!
A dozen chickens wandered contentedly about the yard and the chicken coop. Our hostess had shown us how to retrieve warm eggs every morning, from under the hay.
Another pen housed a well-tended brown pony, and a furry white sheepdog, who lived together happily year-round.
Luckily we would have no responsibilities for the animals beyond admiring them — a neighbor was feeding them.
What was striking was how perfectly sweet and clean everything was. It was like a Disney movie come to life; the animals were all supernaturally cute and tidy and sparkly-eyed, and there were no animal smells; and barely any smells of hay or feed.
It all seemed a bit inexplicable.
Having admired the animals, and been shown around the interior of the house, we said goodbye to our hosts and settled in.
The house itself was a comfortable American home, with nothing unusual about it. There was a master bedroom, with a king-sized bed and a dresser and TV, and two kids' rooms full of toys and games. In the living room were two brown leather recliners; another flat-screen TV hung on the wall. There was beige wall-to-wall carpeting, a glass coffee table, and matching glass side tables.
A galley kitchen with blue formica edging on white counters was well-stocked with pots, pans, appliances and Tupperware. A brown settee, perfect for after-dinner lounging for two, stood perpendicular to the kitchen. It looked out through glass sliding doors to the backyard.
The backyard, for its part, was one of the best features of the house. It was an lovely enclosed place, about twenty feet by thirty feet. Benches were scattered over concrete patio tiles. There was a picnic table; some herbs in Mexican pots; and a shiny metal barbeque near one wall.
The first day and night were uneventful. It was a weekend. We slept well, and went for walks, and made meals, and cleaned up, and loaded the dishwasher.
We spent a lot of time in the yard, basking in the sunshine. Mushroom enjoyed a rare treat — a large enclosed backyard that was perfectly safe. We lived next to open, bear-inhabited woods in New York, so he was rarely off a leash when we were outdoors at home.
Here, though, Mushroom sniffed, free to explore, along the base of the wooden fence. The fence completely sealed the yard away from the desert expanses that surrounded us.
I relaxed, as I had checked the perimeter carefully, and I knew — and Brian had confirmed — that there was no possibility that Mushroom could get out of the backyard. There were no holes anywhere under the fence — there was no brush obscuring any gap; there was no way at all that a little dog off a leash, could be in danger.
We had checked the one gate of the fence as well. It opened inward, and it closed with big, black, solid-iron sliding bolts.
Mushroom spent hours in that backyard, with me genially keeping an eye on him. He enjoyed exploring the safe space; he seemed absorbed in the new smells, the feeling of the Western sunshine, the distant calling of the desert birds.
It was peaceful, and secure, for all of us.
The second night we were there, though, something happened that cannot be understood.
Brian and I were lounging on the settee by the kitchen, each of us having had a single glass of wine with dinner. We had let Mushroom out into the backyard for a twilight wander before bedtime. We could keep an eye on him through the sliding glass doors.
Out of nowhere, though, a dark wind seemed to envelop us, and out of nowhere we, who rarely argue, were bitterly arguing.
What was it about? I can't even recall.
But there was a strange energy suddenly in the room of uncharacteristic harshness and vituperation. Awful, unloving things — the kinds of things we never say — were said.
In the middle of this abrupt, biting back-and-forth, I looked outside.
"Where is Mushroom?"
Neither of us could see him.
Darkness was descending.
I raced into the backyard. Brian ran after me.
I will never forget what happened.
We approached the wooden gate that separated the herb-planted backyard from the desert wastes beyond — the bleak fields of sagebrush, red cedar and lupine, the craggy stretches filled with unseen raptors and coyotes.
The gate, which we had checked so many times, and that we had even physically tested — the gate that swung inward, as we both well knew; that was secured by heavy metal bolts that no little dog could dislodge — that humans could barely shift, and no-one had touched it — that gate was now open.
Wide open.
The solid, well-crafted, inward-swinging gate — now swung outward.
The gate was open outward at at least a hundred and twenty degree angle. The gate splayed open so far that it extended back again almost against the fence from the outside.
Impossibly.
A three foot opening, now yawned.
For a little nearsighted dog, that opening would lead straight from the cozy yard, into the snake-heavy, thorn-heavy, coyote-hungry, darkening desert.
(To be continued).