Hurrying to Beat Dusk

November 9, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  I work in the afternoon and get home, as the sun is setting, about 4:30.  Mway greets me at the porch, then dashes to the door, the stump of her tail wagging.  I hurry to put on my walking clothes

State of the Path:  I pick from the bench the same stick I had yesterday, wondering what kind of wood it is.  From the back yard I can see that, not only the yard, but our entire property is cast in shadow.  A red glow falls upon the trees on the distant ridge that rises at F__ O___ Road.  The sunset itself is a wedge of yellow above Hutchinson’s field.  For a moment it looks like Mway might take the side path, but instead she plunges into the sumacs after something.  She soon returns to the path and sniffs the leaves of a low blackberry shoot.  At the tree stand, I rest my sticks against a honeysuckle to take a pee.  I hear what might be a black-capped chickadee.  Along the creek I lose sight of where Mway has gone.  As I’m coming through the “chokeberries” beyond the swale, the sunset has suddenly become red, saturating four long banks of thick clouds.

State of the Creek:  Brown grass lies heaped on the big log of the log jam, and a couple branches lie athwart it.  A thin scum spreads across the pools below the locust trees.  Black tree trunks reflect in the dark water as I walk along it.

The Fetch:  Mway greets me at the clearing and prances along side me as I walk toward the end of the clearing.  The red glow on the distant ridge has disappeared.  I start tossing the stick just to the end of the clearing, but after a while I heave it farther into the goldenrod.  Mway comes back with it snorting and coughing, and after two tosses like this, she holds the stick in her mouth, backstepping away from me.  I turn to head down the path along the sumacs, the sunset now narrowed to a thin red line in a dark blue sky.