Cousins

My friends have been encouraging me to rise with the sun … at 5:30 am … but I keep missing it by an hour or so on either side.

One on side are the hot flashes – when I leap from my bed around 4am many mornings feeling like an erupting volcano shedding heat in every direction. This morning I hurried out to the porch, threw open the window, and let the winds run havoc through the apartment. I wonder what the summer will be like, when there are no cooling winds.

On the other side of sunrise are the neighborhood dog packs. Just across the alley to the east are two sets of dogs – four in all … behind me to the south is another set of two … and to the west I hear that neighbor has five. They conspire to bark in shifts 24 hours each day. It’s my neighbors to the south that awaken me around 6 or 6:30 each morning with a shrill Pomerian yipping a counterpoint to the larger buddy in the yard … the northern set of eastern neighbors are the daytime barkers – alerting us all to each and every person, dog, cat, pigeon, and sparrow that might pass by. And then, my favorites, the night barkers – they can start barking anytime from 11pm on through about 4am. Sometimes they’re out there for an hour or more without stopping … other times its just five minutes -but then there’s the anticipation of wondering … are they really done? Some subset of the western quintet has recently taken to howling between 8 and 10 am. They are all consistent … I’ll give ‘em that.

I thought about moving … but the only way to get away from the dogs in Butte is to leave Butte entirely – so I’m teaching myself to allow it to be part of the background of my life – like the sparrows, the winds, and the fire sirens.

This weekend I’m heading over to Yellowstone for a few days. I’m hoping to see the wild cousins of my neighbors and the tamer cousins of the volcano.