Midsommar Most Heat Moon
The dogs keep the rhythm familiar here even with Kate gone. They get up at 4:45 to 5:00 a.m. and so do I. I feed them, leave them inside due to the possibility of mountain lion attack, then head up to the loft for work on ancientrails, reading the news, staying in touch with friends and family. Around 7 a.m. it’s breakfast time and I let them out. Around 10 a.m. the dogs get their second feeding, so that’s back downstairs for me. In the interval between breakfast and noon I work out, read, write.
The dogs get outside in this kind of weather and we leave a door open for them. They like that. This still seems weird to me, but there aren’t the bugs up here we had in the humid East.
We nap in the early afternoon, a longstanding habit picked up during my visit to Bogota in 1989.
The afternoon is more reading, catching up on chores, then supper. The dogs go to bed around 6:30, 7:00 p.m. with Gertie and Rigel in their crates in the garage. Kepler stays up until Kate and I go to bed around 8 p.m. A Benjamin Franklin day. And the dogs follow it, too.
July is the hottest month, on average, on Shadow Mountain, hence the Most Heat Moon. Yet, this morning the temperature is 38 degrees. Admittedly we’re still in June, but June is hardly the heart of fall. I’m loving the cooler weather, but I feel for the folks experiencing record heat, especially those with inadequate cooling options.