Sign Special — ASHEN · November 23 – December 12

Thank you, Benedetto.

Ashen, then, November twenty-third through December twelfth, twenty days of the year, and the sign of Smoky Quartz, a clear stone with weather inside it, gray as a sky that has not yet decided, the color of smoke held in glass and a road seen through.

Morning mist, whose mood is resourceful adaptability, which is a polite way of saying this dog regards a washed-out bridge as merely the river suggesting a more interesting crossing.

Ashen is the improviser of the pack, and it runs on the trail instinct, which means an Ashen does not follow the marked path.

It follows the way through, the gap in the fence, the shallow place in the creek, the route that exists only because this dog was willing to notice it.

Its gift is adaptability.

The Ashen dog is adaptable, resourceful, famous for landing on its feet, and holds one unshakable article of faith: that a closed road is not the end of the journey, only the end of the plan.

While the rest of the pack is still standing at the washed-out bridge reading the notice twice, the Ashen has crossed at the fallen tree half a mile back and is already drying off on the far bank because to an Ashen, that is precisely what a morn is for.

Now, the other side of the page, because this paper tells the whole truth.

This is a dog that treats every plan as a first draft written by somebody else.

It has crossed a flooded field by way of a wheelbarrow, a farm gate, and what witnesses describe simply as confidence turned a rained-out expedition into the best afternoon of the season using a tarpaulin, two chairs, and a story told twice.

And once arrived at a picnic by a route that no map in the county will admit to.

The sign's great temptation is risk, and its standing warning is a serious one delivered kindly.

Beware of confusing adaptability with direction, of changing course so gracefully and so often that you arrive everywhere except where you were going.

Under stress, the quicksilver hardens into a refusal to be pinned down, and its one true companion fear is commitment.

Not change, which it could survive, since change is its native weather, but the terrible day it must choose one road, one den, one sir, and let all the other possible lives close quietly behind it.

Its vice is aimlessness.

Its virtue is resourcefulness.

The same quick feet wandering or finding.

Its official motto is the whole biography in four words: We'll make it work.

And its favorite human excuse is the motto's first cousin, which tells you everything: We'll figure it out.

To an Ashen, the motto is the map and the excuse is the compass, and both of them point the same way: forward, somehow.

Its natural habitat is anywhere.

Anywhere the road bends, any crossroads with four open directions, any patch of ground that will do for tonight, any shore the weather has just rearranged.

Its lucky object is the rope knot, its lucky place the crossroads, its lucky color slate blue, and its lucky food is stir fry, which is of course an improviser's feast.