GETTING UP TOO EARLY...

   BIG DOG HAS WAKENED ME quite early on this Saturday of Memorial Weekend; he is desperate; he HAS to go outside!.
   At 4 a.m., in summer-style warmth of pre-dawn darkness, we are greeted by a clear sky filled with stars, and we are walking to the music of a choir of cicada. The moon is sliding slowly down behind tall trees along the west horizon of our valley.
   The air is soft; there is no breeze at all; and my flashlight beam picks up the slightest hint of dew on fresh-mown grass. We don't have to be in daylight to feel and sense and smell the beauty of this nascent day.
   When my dog has done his duty, we enjoy the here and now; lingering just a bit as we walk slowly back toward the house..
   Getting up too early isn't always necessarily a bad thing, is it, Mick?

A TREE TO LOOK UP TO...

Big Dog and I don't really hug this old black walnut tree; no human arms could reach around the broad girth of its mossy trunk.

But we never pass that tree, Big Dog and me, that we don't stop beside it to stand up tall and look straight up into its spreading branches. For Mick, I know it's that he wants to see if his old nemesis Black Squirrel is lurking there. For me, it's that I simply love this tree; love the very LOOK of it, reaching up into the stratosphere.

We stopped here yesterday, a cloudy day, when the sun surprisingly came out just before the end of day. That inspired Big Dog and me to walk outside along the trail leading to the tree, near the barn my Bob had built so many years ago, beside the singing creek. Bob loved that tree and creek and barn; to his last day among us.

What better way, I mused, for Mick and me to end our day? What better place for us to stop and say, "Good night, World... Good night, tree and barn and creek... And good night, Bob." 

And then we walked to Bob's stone bench above the creek and watched the sun go down. Quietly, in peace.