2.14.13       The Embrace of The Evening Dark

     For some reason I am drawn to go for a walk after dark, the world/my world seeming so much smaller and quieter and more subdued after dusk. 
     We live on the high point of a country road, small and slender, with the mountain range rising up directly on the opposite side of the road, a steep hill up to our driveway, and a steep hill leading down directly after, while our home squats upon a foothill of the range.
     Due to this geography, in order to get a good and safe walk and return in one piece, no matter the time of day, I often put the little old dog in the car and drive down to the neighborhoods by the Connecticut River. 
     There are a few streets that border our little, busy Rt 9, that have large greens where, hundreds of years ago, the town's livestock fed, and now retain a street on each side, then the sidewalks and old houses, the enormous Maples this spring wearing maple sap buckets as they have for so many years, and a wide variety of inhabitants within all the old homes. 
     So we pick a road, park, I go for a real walk about the block, leaning into the sometimes frigid wind, then go back and retrieve the impatiently waiting dog, for her meandering stroll. It is the older dog walk, that involves much  smelling, snuffling, walking very slowly to not miss a sound or whiff or aspect of the evening, and is almost completely centered upon the necessity to pee upon other's pee, meander, stroll, and pee once again.
       When my kids were younger and handed the task of walking yet another old dog, I would explain that she was having a chance to effectively 'read the paper 'of other dogs and life elsewheres. I asked them to please allow her three short stops and two long stops, and by then, going out of their 9 and 10 year-old-minds,  eager to get home and see friends and get homework done, they could bustle her along home. 
     Now, they are 24 and 25 (and 33) and here I remain, years older myself, with one more old dog, edging her away from unseen obstacles, ushering her along her delightful, much looked forward to walk, quietly strolling along behind her as she makes her way down the street, as I find myself struggling and managing to remember what delight she takes in this, and to give her the time to be somewhere other than my bed, doing something other than sleep. 
     And as we walk, the magic of light and evening pervade everything. Her pace irrevocably leads me to a quiet of angst and lists and urgencies left behind like so many sloshed footsteps in a late February evening. 
     A bobbing light approaches, and I turn my own head lamp on to be visible to whomever approaches, which turns out to be another soul such as myself, with another four footed soul on their own delight filled neighborhood walk. 
     We greet each other, smell for smell, and they quietly pass, the dog as eager to resume the trek as my own beloved here is, as she pulls impatiently upon her leash, to get back to business.
       I turn to look back a minute later, and both our lights have been turned off, both humans and dogs returned to the womblike quiet and embrace of the evening dark.