Corky and I rode home on the train, headed for Syracuse, then Ithaca. After three days in the city my dog seemed larger. She sat with her head on my knee and stared at me. Blind people know when their dogs are staring—it feels like visual cinnamon—a thing both soft and memorable. We sat a long time like that in a rocking railway car—the two of us taking in each other’s growth. We’d had a superb journey.
I’d seen Art Blakey. Corky had seen three super sized rats under the fountain at the Plaza Hotel. I’d seen—no, felt, how it really was to take the subway without a human partner—she saw the lightning of underground trains and didn’t flinch. And so we really were larger, together. It’s this largeness that makes a guide dog team—invisible, rich, made all the richer by experience—like love itself. And like survival. I saw that if you survive the unknown without bitterness you grow. You grow when your name has taken on new progressive meanings. This is why tribal people have always had spirit journeys for their young people. Corky and I had gone into the woods and come had home again with stronger identities. I’d followed my dog; had stopped when she told me to; and she’d trusted me to make the right directional choices. There are two streets for guide dogs and their partners—the visible one, the one with the traffic—then there’s the hidden one, the one seen only by dog and man—the road of moonbeams and faith. “Jesus,” I thought. “No wonder we feel accomplished. We’ve just walked all over New York on a net of moonbeams.”
Planet of the Blind 