{"id":571,"date":"2005-12-07T18:49:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-07T18:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=571"},"modified":"2020-04-18T20:37:13","modified_gmt":"2020-04-19T02:37:13","slug":"571","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=571","title":{"rendered":"Cold Weather"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came home Tuesday evening and found that M. was upset because one of the dogs was missing. Shelby is a collie-mix who was one step above feral when we got her, and although she has learned to appreciate having her own bed, regular meals, and belly rubs, she will still wander onto the national forest looking for carcasses to scavenge.<\/p>\n

M. had looked for her already, but I volunteered to go out too. The temperature was about 10 degrees F. (-12 C.) and dropping<\/a>. Light, powdery snow was falling. I changed clothes, grabbed a walking stick, and headed up the Forest Service road into the Mason Gulch Burn, stopping occasionally to call and whistle.<\/p>\n

From last summer’s forest fire<\/a> to this: the snowy ground, the black skeletons of pine trees like nervous pencil marks on white paper, the lowering clouds, and the failing light. All was silent except for the whisper of snow on the fabric of my coat.<\/p>\n

If any scene exemplified the phrase “dead of winter,” that was it.<\/p>\n

When it started getting too dark to see, I went home, dogless. As it turned out, she was hanging around a neighbor’s house. In her doggie brain, she must think like this: “Life is good now, but if these people fail me, I had better have a Plan B. And a Plan C. As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Cross-posted to Southern Rockies Nature Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came home Tuesday evening and found that M. was upset because one of the dogs was missing. Shelby is a collie-mix who was one step above feral when we got her, and although she has learned to appreciate having her own bed, regular meals, and belly rubs, she will still wander onto the national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[102,84],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dogs","tag-winter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-571","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4665,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4665","url_meta":{"origin":571,"position":0},"title":"A Dream, a Dog, and a Forest Fire","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Last Monday, the 22nd, I came home from a week-long trip. On Tuesday, I was temporarily homeless, a condition that persisted until Friday. Tuesday's weather was warm and windy, with the highest gust in the area clocked at 79 mph. Somehow \u2014 I still have not heard the definitive story\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-dV57BkoZQRQ\/UIgi2vbiO8I\/AAAAAAAABdc\/_ixQl3ANtJA\/s400\/volcanofire.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":897,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=897","url_meta":{"origin":571,"position":1},"title":"A Wiccan Wedding & the Strangeness of Memory","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"My wedding to M. was conducted by the HP and HPS of our coven at a Forest Service group campground near Colorado Springs. The campground reservation cost $10 or $15 back then, and the wedding finished with a potluck feast. I think we paid for some cheese and champagne. My\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Wicca\"","block_context":{"text":"Wicca","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=wicca"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1168,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1168","url_meta":{"origin":571,"position":2},"title":"Ave Smokey","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We encountered an American demigod up in Salida, Colorado, during FIBARk today. The woman in the black T-shirt would appear to be an attending priestess, since her shirt has a Forest Service emblem on it.Apparently he blesses dogs as well as preventing forest fires.","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1193,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1193","url_meta":{"origin":571,"position":3},"title":"Just Another Saturday","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Wake up, feed the dogs, make coffee. Take Fisher, the newly adopted (last May) Chessie, for a walk. (Shelby, the ninja-collie, goes to visit her Rottweiler friend Bruno on her own.)Start working on laying out an article for Pomegranate 11.1 in Adobe InDesign.M. gets up. We eat breakfast. I cut\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7368,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7368","url_meta":{"origin":571,"position":4},"title":"Lammas, Wild Harvest, and “the Notch”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Many of the Pagan bloggers are putting up their \"Happy Lammas\/Lughnasad\" posts. My archaeoastronomical friends who study mysterious ancient solar alignments point out that \"real\" Lammas is still six days away. But there is \"the notch.\" In 1986, when I moved to this part of Colorado, a friend told me,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"nibbled bolete","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nibbled-bolete.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nibbled-bolete.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nibbled-bolete.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6042,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6042","url_meta":{"origin":571,"position":5},"title":"A Phone Call for Owlivia","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 27, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I have two volunteer gigs, and they both involve unexpected telephone calls. For the rural volunteer fire department, it will be a recorded voice saying something like, \"We have a smoke report east of Highway 165 and north of Highway 78.\" That is followed by a sudden switch into Nomex\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"Owlivia release_sm","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Owlivia-release_sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Owlivia-release_sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Owlivia-release_sm.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Owlivia-release_sm.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11403,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/11403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}