For the several months that have gone by since we lost Franco, I’ve managed to maintain my morning walks. I still think about him and even talk to him on these walks. I still miss him a great deal, but not as badly as I once did. Now the walks are more joyful… a good-habit legacy of the years he and I had together.
Most evenings I also get out for a walk. This winter has been such a great one that I eagerly anticipate my evening walks. Tonight I was treated with a special event… a Moon Dog. This is a circular light around the moon that is quite rare in my experience. In order for a Moon Dog to form, the moon has to be close to full, and there have to be enough high ice crystals in the atmosphere to do their magic with the moon’s light. Tonight the moon was high enough in the sky during my walk that the Moon Dog was a complete circle around the moon.
I did try to take a picture of it, but it came out as a tiny white dot on a black background.
I’ve been thinking about good habits. One of them is owning a dog. Some others are eating right and exercising. These walks I take are enjoyable in their own right, but are also good for me. It gets me out into the real world, where the events of the seasons play out in technicolor for anyone interested in observing. It is unusual for me to encounter a car on our road while I’m walking, which is a plus as far as I’m concerned. I can be alone with my own thoughts as my heart rate ramps up to match my exertion.
One of the purposes of my blog is to extol the virtues of living in the country. Having a beautiful safe place to walk is surely one of the many. Some evenings I am even treated to coyote and/or wolf howling. It doesn’t get much better than that.