A Quiet Night Walk

It’s just past 10:30 on Saturday night and I’m just back from walking Gracie. Early in the walk I was musing on the dinner party I’d gone to with Ellen and the folks we visited with, and the fact that when we came home we found that Gracie had chewed up the nozzle of a little spray bottle of eyeglass cleaner. We had turned the corner a few houses down from ours, and I watched her sniffing the grass and wondered motivates her to chew things up from time to time. Does she need a crate, would another dog help, what… and I suddenly noticed how quiet it was in the neighborhood. No peepers, no crickets, no nightbirds. I also realized I had no idea what the names of the usual nocturnal noise-makers are. Another post for that sometime.

I had my phone, could have been listening to a podcast or some music or the radio, but it no, it was so quiet. She did her business, stopped in the middle of the street, and looked up at the sky as she sniffed the wind. We heard a dog bark from some streets away and stood there for a couple of minutes just listening. I shaded my eye from the streetlight and tried to see the fleecy clouds in the light of the half moon. They didn’t seem to be moving. It was chilly, but not cold. It felt satisfying to hear just the night breeze in the trees, the occasional car go by on the main road outside our street, my own clothes rustling as I walked and my shoes off-rhythm with Gracie’s claws on the asphalt as we came home.