Half a Moon

This afternoon late I walked to the other side of the creek in preparation for our walk down the road. The three dogs as usual were there with me chasing each other and frolicking together through the small pasture. It is rare that they do not accompany us on our afternoon walk. It is, in fact the high point of their day and perhaps mine as well. I got to the other side of the creek waiting for Linda and stopped there in the tall drying grass waiting on her to come walking across the bridge. There by the old wooden barn with the rusting orange tin roof I looked up into the sky to see a perfect opalescent pearl half moon suspended high in the late afternoon sky. It had been a beautiful cobalt blue all day and now with the light slowly diminishing and night growing closer the color deepened and everything took on an attenuation that made me wonder if we actually had time to walk down the road and get back before night fall. The trees abutting the road are now well into the late fall stages of dormancy with their dry colorless leaves mostly covering the ground mounded around the base of their trunks like piles of brown confetti.

Linda finally came walking across the small bridge beneath the now naked branches of the bald cypress trees. As we walked down the road the moon was at our backs but after walking for a half a mile we rounded one of the many hair pin curves and lo and behold there was the moon high in the sky in front of us. We had come full circle and the moon instead of watching our departure was now watching us approach. The sun was long down and the temperature was dropping like a stone as it does in late November here at Big Creek and the rest of North Georgia especially in the higher elevations of the mountains. We ambled down the road together, the dogs running and playing along the edges and in the borders of the creek Moose banging into JD turning her end over end in somersaults and making her yelp. We walked to where the culvert runs beneath the road taking the creek with it and paused. There after a short discussion we turned around and started back towards the house. Usually we walk half a mile further but today we decided to start back because of the lateness and the chill in the air. Moose snorted as if to ask if we had made some mistake turning back before our walk was finished. He feels cheated, I am sure when our walks are reduced and he doesn't get to run and play for the usual amount of time. But start back we did anyway even with his disapproving looks and snorts. The moon did not seem to care one way or the other and impassively observed our coming and going.