Walking after dark

We have a new dog. This is an exciting development in our household, although Teddy has fit in so well as to make her arrival almost a non-event, except that the back yard fence is finally being rebuilt (to my great pleasure). I tell you only because I now find myself walking the neighborhood at a time of night when I in the past allowed myself to lapse into the doldrums of television.


Evening walks are a sensory experience. Without the definition of daylight, my relationship with my environment becomes much more tactile - previously duck-able branches and leaves part my hair as I forge through them; I cannot time my passage through the sprinkler; plants easily identified in the morning are instead appreciated solely for their scent, thrown across the grass by ungainly dog and leash. Streetlights throw japanese leaf prints on the sidewalk, dappled art disrupted but undisturbed by my passage. I find myself lost just yards from home, disoriented by unfamiliar landscaping. Fortunately Teddy guides me, lurching against her lead, home.