Remember the comedy series “Seinfeld,” often described as a show about nothing? Well, this is a column about nothing in case you want to stop right here.

My dog, Rabia, was born in Cabot, Vt., when we had the good fortune to live there in what they call the Northeast Kingdom. It is a spectacularly beautiful northern region marked by mountains with sharp ridges, and valleys with powerful creeks and rivers emptying into “ponds” that anywhere else would be called lakes. The NEK borders Quebec and, in addition to its beauty, is cold.

I moved there from Buffalo so I knew about cold, and would often check the temperature difference between the two. Ten degrees in Buffalo could be zero in Newport, where I lived. Five degrees in Buffalo would be minus-5 in Newport. There were nights, plenty of them, when it was minus-10 when I walked Rabia and she didn’t care. It would take me five minutes to get bundled up enough to take her out, but she would just prance through the snow and not want to return.

Rabia still loves the snow and acts like a puppy with even half an inch on the ground. She will be 10 in four months, and still runs crazy-eights like a maniac when given the chance. Still fast too. But I see her age creeping in. Dogs get white hair, too, around the eyes and muzzle. While she is blonde everywhere else, the white is now showing. But where I notice her aging the most is when she shivers from the cold. I’m not talking 10 or minus-10, but a measly 30 degrees she would have laughed at in Vermont.

Most days we share a bench by the lake, and in all kinds of weather too. Light rain, heavy snow, fierce wind, heat or cold — the joy is in experiencing the lake and its denizens in all kinds of weather. Like watching a gull fly straight into the teeth of a bitter north wind and its strategies for making progress. Likewise, trying to identify fish as they break the surface of glassy calm water or witnessing an osprey or hawk gracefully dive and strafe the lake then pull one up in its talons. Even little things, like which leaves drop first or in the spring, which seedpods get blown off the trees first. The behavior of worms, the lunking flight of heron, or what humans leave behind — all of it is the best kind of theater regardless of the weather.

But now Rabia shivers in the cold, or moderate cold. She doesn’t want for a thick coat; our vacuum cleaner is proof of that. She is a bit on the skinny side, but nothing we do to fatten her up has ever worked. I think it is just her aging — like I mentioned last week about myself. So I broke down and bought her a coat and she looks silly in it. She knew she looked silly, too, the first time she wore it, like a dog with the cone of shame around its neck looks sheepish.

But now, now she wears it like a fur, grinning and so pleased in her fashionable drape. So now, when the wind and waves roar or the temperature drops, we can sit there without her shivering and me feeling like her bad human.

Cameron Miller of Geneva is an author and minister. His fiction and poetry are available through Amazon. Contact him through his website at subversivepreacher.org.

QOSHE - DENIM SPIRIT: This is about nothing (but you might want to read it anyway) - Cameron Miller

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DENIM SPIRIT: This is about nothing (but you might want to read it anyway)

Cameron Miller

Finger Lakes Times

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13.12.2023

Remember the comedy series “Seinfeld,” often described as a show about nothing? Well, this is a column about nothing in case you want to stop right here.

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DENIM SPIRIT: This is about nothing (but you might want to read it anyway)

Cameron Miller

© Finger Lakes Times