Turn and Live With the Anmals

Joanna Bourne, Historical Romance

I’m drinking a cup of coffee before dawn and listening to my recently-booted furnace wheeze into life. 

When I get up in these transition days of spring and crawl out from under the warm covers of my bed and find myself shivering, sometimes I go close the window and turn on the furnace. 

Right now I’m thinking about that one small choice. First choice of the day.

It’s not that I mind shivering as a matter of principle. There’s no moral imperative to stay at 70° plus or minus 4. Discomfort usefully reminds us we’re living beings, not enameled birds sitting on a golden bough.

Speaking as a responsible citizen of the commonwealth of the world, it makes a lot more sense to put on a sweater and warm up the 1.76 cubic feet (on average) of a human body than to heat the 17,000 cubic feet of the main floor and basement of a house. 

I like leaving the windows open because it makes me feel part of the natural world, at least that world as expressed by this well-groomed and almost-painfully-cozy small town neighborhood.
It’s not precisely “Nature is red in tooth and claw” here — unless you count the battle of the political yard signage — but there’s sky and bird song and green stuff growing. I can close my eyes and feel a little connected to the oncoming dawn.

I heat the place for the dog. 

She’s getting old. She sleeps most of the time now, sitting on the sofa, tucked up close to me. The fur of her muzzle is white. When I take her to the dog park, she mostly sits and watches the other dogs chasing back and forth. When the house cools down over the night she curls up close and circular on her dog bed. 

I turn on the heat because I want to keep her warm.
Taking care of the dog is also part of the natural world.
Humans have been doing this a long time. 

Shepherdess me, six thousand years ago, would have crunched through the new snow to check out the spring lambs in the early dawn after a chilly night. My dog would be at my heels,or leading me to any particularly vulnerable creature who’d had problems in the dark hours.

When we sat down to share breakfast I’d check her paws and pick cockleburs out of her fur. Scratch her back and fluff her fur and comb her with my fingers. Talk to her as the sun comes up.

So this morning, that was how I communed with the Natural World even in my muffled-up, still and quiet, house.
Me and the dog, man. Me and the dog.

RITA-winning author Joanna Bourne writes historical fiction set in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and Regency England. It was a time of love and sacrifice, clashing ideals, and really cool clothing.