I’m on this butte.  That’s a silly word for hill.  I’m on this knob with no one else.  I can’t hear anyone.  I don’t see anyone.  It’s problem quiet.  But I’ve got my dog, so he’s giving me comfort.  He’s breathing heavy and chasing things that scurry, or flutter, or crawl, or squeak.  I didn’t give a damn.  I’m hanging out.  Interested in what would happen next.  I lay down.  The dog wanders and wanders and wanders.  Then he steps on my hands and licks at my face with all that bad dog breath.  

He doesn’t finally lay down until the sky was darkening.  I keep an eye on the dog.  I’m curious of his reaction.  But he doesn’t do much.  He lays down with his head on my lap.  I pet him and tell him he’s handsome — (because that’s what I do with my dog when no one is around).  He’s fine.  I’m worried he’ll freak out and turn into a werwolf or a unicorn or something spooky like that.

The sky gets darker and the wind picks up and goes in circles around me.  That’s when I got scared.  It goes from normal day to weird tornado landscape in a few minutes.  I’m half shitting my pants and I know in the back of my head that dogs are supposed to be able to sense fear or whatever.  But this dog is a twenty-two dollar Craig's List dog.  His instincts have been washed away with inbreeding long ago.  He can’t give a shit.  The sun may as well have shut off and turned on ten times over and he’d be in that same lazy position, staring at me, waiting for a word like “treat” or “sit” or “get the fuck out of the kitchen.”  Those are the only words he understands.

The world turns nighttime and I become less scared.  I’m fascinated.  It riles up all kinds of curiosity.  Watching the sun hit the snooze button really opens up some perspective, at least for a few minutes it does.

Then the sun emerges, crawls out of the shadows.  And everything goes back to normal, almost too fast to imagine.  The birds are back. The bats are away.  The owls fast asleep again.  Even the trees seem to stand taller.  The landscape is well-rested from its catnap.  

My watch stops working. 

I take a few minutes to sit in that post eclipse sunlight, then go about to writing what I remembered.