Grateful For Open Spaces
I’m thankful for the people who planned ahead.
I took my dogs running in a field tonight. There’s a five-acre field — Ascot Park— only two blocks from my house, and I take the dogs over there three or four nights a week so they can run wild in the dark underneath the light of the moon or stars.
It’s a tradition. I put my three dogs in the back of the Jeep, all together, and I say, “Okay, keep your tails in!” And then I shut the back gate. We drive over to the field, the dogs whimpering and whining with excitement, and then I stop the Jeep, get out, walk to the back gate, open it, and they come tumbling out, scrabbling and barking for joy.
We always go over there in the dark, when very few people or other dogs are using the space, so my three dogs can be joyous “dogs without leashes” as the poet Mary Oliver always wrote.
Bob Dylan, Hank Williams Jr., and Dragon hop out of the Jeep and begin to run and run and run and run, as I stand staring at the moon…or the stars…or at Jupiter…or Venus, depending on the season. It’s a good, long nighttime moment for all of us, and I’m grateful for the time.
But I’m also grateful for the space.
I live in the city — not a big city, but a city nonetheless — and I’m so thankful that the original city planners laid…
