This Specific Sunset
I’ve been converting about fifteen years of blog and journal entries into this new format “by hand,” in the sense that I go through each entry and copy the text over and put the photos back into it in the right places.
This week, I made it to 2008, and I found that I had written sort of a long love letter to my buddy Comet starting back then and stretching forward. More recently, I’ve put photos on Instagram or Facebook when I just have a nice shot and not all that much to say about it, but I used to put everything in the Journal (when I started, Instagram wasn’t even a thing!).
I know a few people do come here to read about dog training, and a few others come to see some dog or bird pictures, and a very few, maybe, are even interested in reading a few musings about what dogs or the outdoors mean to us as people.
But really, this started as a way for me to keep a photo diary about my wanderings and about my beloved dogs. And going back through Comet’s puppyhood, post by post, looking at each photo and each thought I had—no matter how maudlin or goofy—means it has served its purpose. And that reminded me not just to post a string of photos of Murphy and Killian on social media, but also to stop and reflect on them sometimes, so that I can always look back and freshen my memory, particularly on a day, long from now, when I can’t just reach to my left while I’m writing and tangle my fingers in their fur and say, “good dog.”
It will be nice then to look back at this particular day and this particular sunset and dog, knowing there will never be another of either that was quite the same ever again.
So I’ll share with you—and so also with myself—what I thought when I took this photo: give me a friend with a true heart and some salt water to walk him by, and the cold air will just make our sunset sharper and sweeter.