Friday 31 January 2014

Night Walk

The owl lifts noiselessly off the field, his ghostly shape caught at the edge of the torchlight.

Startled, Bertie looks up at me for reassurance and his eyes glow green-gold.  Other eyes, across Monsieur F's land, reflect back the same colour and immediately vanish - a fox or feral cat.

We reach the brow of the hill and walk down the slope towards the small bridge crossing the stream.  Our cottage comes into view on the left. A grey outline with two small diamonds of light shining out from high in the end wall. No doubt Tod is still at his computer.

Vita and Bertie hunt ecstatically along the pitch black ditches. The wet grass sparkles with rain drops lit by the torch as we pass. The sky shimmers with stars.  Orion's Belt to the south and west. The Plough to the north and east. The only two constellations I recognise. A plane's lights wink overhead - too high for the engine noise to carry.

Heavy rain clouds lie along the western horizon, deep grey billows touched with orange from the light spill of a distant town.

We turn down onto Monsieur F's left-hand field , slipping and slithering through the mud, and follow the stream, swollen with all the rain, gurgling and splashing in the dark.

Sloshing across the gully that borders Philippe's farmland, we head back for the final trek up our meadow to the cottage. To warmth. And dry towels for wet muddy paws. And bed.

4 comments:

  1. I do enjoy your writing...you make what you see so clear to me.

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  2. Thank you Helen. And I enjoy the writing, the pleasure of trying to write something well, knowing that there is someone out there who appreciates it. :)

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  3. It reads as so romantic a last dog walk with so much to 'see' in the dark. We, however, do The Hour Dog Walk in the morning so that we can all be showered and dried for the day with pops out and last chance for tinkles -for the dog- before bedtime. He comes home filthy up to his Plimsole Line these days and I've been known to slip and measure my length in the mud. Summer soon?

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  4. Hi Lesley, you have my sympathy, I've been flat on my back. I tried to dry Vita with the hairdryer this morning after their walk with Tod. She wasn't thrilled! Sadly, it looks like this is it for the foreseeable future. :(

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