The NBA playoffs are over (LeBron finally got the championship for which he always seemed destined), which means summer is truly here on this first full day of the season.
It sure feels like summer here in the east. The heat has been a beast. We’ve taken refuge in the mountains for a few days, where at least it cools off a bit at night.
Last night Millie woke me up in the wee hours with a quiet little whine at the back door. This usually denotes an emergency, so I threw on a T-shirt, trotted downstairs and let her out. I went to the window and tracked her through the dark from the kitchen window. She briefly disappeared in the shadows from the woods, then reappeared in the middle of the yard. There she sat, very still, ghostly white in the luminosity of a crystal-clear night, head tilted up, staring at the sky.
What on earth was she doing? What was she seeing? It seemed to me she was looking at the stars, at the silvery heavens above, the Milky Way smeared across the horizons. I didn’t call her in. I let her stay that way for a while, just gazing up at the sky on the first night of summer.
Who knows what goes through a dog’s mind sometimes, what powers God has granted them that we can only imagine. What they see that we don’t see. What they feel.
After a while Millie rose and headed back toward the house. I heard a little scratch at the door and let her in. Her tail was swishing. She took a quick drink of water, trotted upstairs and put herself back to bed.
I almost followed but instead I wrote the foregoing. I didn’t want to wake up in the morning and think it was only a dream.
Happy summer, everyone.
