Travels with Casey by Benoit Denizet-Lewis

Author:Benoit Denizet-Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

ON OUR second day in Marfa, Casey and I met a dog that almost made me forget about San Antonio. His name was Dersu, and at first glance he seemed out of place in the high desert of West Texas. A Malamute/Husky, he had a heavy black and white coat, ears that stood straight up, and the kind of mystical, mismatched eyes—one brown, one blue—that seemed anything but accidental. The twelve-year-old dog was one of the most beautiful creatures I’d ever seen.

To my delight, Dersu was paired with humans who shared my reverence for him. Nick Terry and Maryam Amiryani—both attractive, dark-haired painters in their forties—had moved from New York City to Marfa a decade prior, in search of a quieter, simpler existence. They’d bought a three-acre property on the far east end of town, with a backyard that overlooks an abandoned pecan orchard.

I’d learned of them through a woman at the Chinati Foundation (a contemporary art museum in Marfa) who had taken it upon herself to introduce me to some of Marfa’s many dog lovers. Thanks to her, I found myself drinking green tea on the shaded patio of Nick and Maryam’s wood-framed painting studios. As we spoke, Casey and Dersu napped on the grass.

“I just feel really privileged to live every day with this creature,” Maryam told me.

“Thanks,” Nick deadpanned, before breaking into a grin. “Oh, you meant the dog?”

Nick shared Maryam’s admiration for what Dersu has added to their lives. “He tests my cynicism,” Nick explained. “We have this idyllic life here in so many ways, but because we’re human, we can get easily frustrated by things and lose a sense of what we have, of what the present moment offers. But for Dersu, each walk is truly thrilling. It makes his day! He sniffs the same spots. He walks the same forty-minute route twice a day every day. And he finds the beauty in it, the magic in it. In some ways it’s absurd to compare a dog’s life to a human life, but in another way it isn’t. As humans, can we appreciate each moment, each day? I learn so much from him.”

“Dersu teaches me patience,” Maryam added. “He has infinite patience.”

Patience had served Dersu well in the years he spent tied to a tree outside a trailer in town. Nick and Maryam had first spotted the dog six years earlier, in the spot where Dersu’s previous owner would leave him every day with a bowl of water. He was underweight and his hair was matted, but Maryam and Nick noticed something else about him, too.

“He had such a beautiful demeanor and spirit despite his obviously terrible circumstances,” Maryam recalled.

When they heard that the owner wanted to sell the dog, Maryam lied and told him she’d always wanted a Malamute/Husky. Two hundred dollars later, the dog was theirs. But they weren’t sure what to do with him. “At first we didn’t even plan to keep Dersu—we mostly just wanted to free him,” Nick said. “We thought maybe we’d send him to Alaska.

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