Today I left the house without my jacket.

In the Midwest, a blizzard is swallowing highways. In California, someone is ordering a Blizzard to cool off.

We move through weather whether we’re prepared or not — wind, heat, stillness, the sudden cold that makes you reconsider your own judgment. I once thought about buying all the technology to become a “weather person.” There are thousands of them now, broadcasting from garages and spare bedrooms. It’s the new CB radio club, only with better antennas.

These days, I measure the seasons by simpler things.

Whether I take my jacket, or whether I leave the door ajar at night.

Out here, the city noise barely reaches me. Traffic dissolves into the distance. What remains is nature, and nature does not whisper. The coyotes conduct the darkness, tracing ridgelines, calling across creek beds. It sounds melodic until you realize it’s a map — and a hunt.

I woke from a dream just now.

Not chased, not threatened.

Just listening.

A soft cry, a shuddering moan — like a puppy punished for barking but unable to silence itself. The sound was so faint it felt like only the creature itself could hear it.

But it wasn’t a puppy.

And not yet food.

It was hiding under my deck, only yards from my open door. Yards from where I slept in the recliner. In the dream, I heard it clearly. And now, the sound thinned, retreated, became harder to understand.

And that’s the season too —

the way the world speaks plainly in dreams, but awake it becomes almost too soft to hear.