The Call of the Wild...

These days you’ll find him outside more than inside.

Sitting on guard.

Or laying next to the bushes on fluffy dirt…softened by his comings and goings.

Content to just be.

Often alone….but accepting of quiet companionship.

…and as I describe him, I’m smiling.

I’m more or less the same.

He’ll be 8 on December 27th…surpassing my age when you do the dog to human math.

Perhaps he’s thinking about the same things that I am.

Perhaps we realize a lot more than we did a few years ago.

Perhaps we lean into one another a little harder.

Perhaps we sense the shelf life in all of this…

As nature calls us to pull up our favorite chair.

Picture a wave in the ocean...

"Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through, and it's there, and you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave. And then it crashes on the shore, and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while.

That's one conception of death for a Buddhist. The wave returns to the ocean, where it came from, and where it's supposed to be."