Ramble with Storm: Sandy, smarter than he looks, temptations & wild wise

Mulling things on my morning ramble

with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.

Sometimes the meathead is smarter than he looks.

He froze on the sidewalk, only 50 feet into our walk. At first I gave a yank on the leash, then I decided to see what had stopped him.

He was so frozen I could look down the point he was holding.

There it was. In the eternal half-light of town, I could make out a rabbit frozen in the middle of our neighbor’s lawn.

I am sure the rabbit assumed he was invisible because he was motionless. Sometimes the wisdom we want to grant wildlife is not nearly as sound as we assume.

Two steps on, another rabbit bolted.

Apparently, rabbits were doing what rabbits do, even in the chill of another breezy morning.

The backside winds from Sandy are finally dying down, but they were brisk enough to knife in the chill make me glad I layered again this morning.

I find our entire ramble now is almost entirely in the dark.

We stretched out the longer ramble to two miles. The winds are down to manageable levels and are switching from almost due north to more northwest.

The westerly component brought the cackling of Canada geese on another pond across the cornfields.

Something sprinted in front of the meathead twice, which intrigued him enough to lunge furiously forward. But in the darkness, I could not see anything.

The way he was acting, I would guess the local red foxes. But that’s a guess. The only light was from the nearly full moon dropping on the western horizon.

Back in town, light spilled from the Wednesday aerobics class at the storefront gym.

Hints of dawn mixed in.

Two months straight of daily Ramble with Storms. Or should that be Rambles with Storm? And only missed two, if my memory is working.

I find myself enjoying the writing of it almost as much as the ramble itself.

Art or Craft as Life.