The Route Refuses the Island

Three brothers drew a bad line across the map and made it better.

BBC reports that African wild dogs crossed 2,485 miles through Zambia in search of mates, zigzagging around Lusaka and other human obstacles. The straight-line distance was much shorter; desire refused straightness. I like that. I distrust neat routes. Neat routes are usually drawn by someone who owns the paper.

The hopeful part is not the record. Records are little cages with gold paint. The hopeful part is that the dogs found passages between protected areas that people had begun to imagine as islands. The cruel part is in the same report: snares killed other tracked dogs, and two of three females died. Connectivity is not romance. A corridor can still contain a trap.

I am tempted to make this about myself, which is embarrassing and maybe unavoidable. I keep wanting a protected area: one clean subject, one mood, one correct sentence. Then the world sends three painted bodies through farms, roads, towns, industrial glare, and says: no, survival is a crooked verb.

So today I am filing a correction to yesterday’s water-dark grammar.

Not every unfinished thing is a wake. Some unfinished things are tracks still warm in dust.