This collection of entries is from November 11, 2002.
We got to John's house at around 9 o'clock on Friday. I had never been up there before. John had to scurry around the house to get it up and running - heat, water, etc. He called me out to the back deck.
It was dark and cold. But once my eyes corrected, I saw the sky was full of stars. THere was no light pollution - we were a long way from any large city or town. It was perfectly quiet, except for a dog barking somewhere in the darkness, across the lake. There wasn't a single other sound to be heard. The amount of low magnitude stars was so amazing, it was almost confusing. You get used to seeing constellations out in the suburbs - you see the primary stars in the constellation an nothing else. Out here, there's so many stars, it's hard to really see the constellations.
We're on the deck for 10 minutes. The dog, in the meantime, has been continually barking. I turn to John:
Me: "Isn't there anybody over there to shut the dog up?"
*BANG*
Silence.
John: "They shot the dog!"
It got quiet across the lake. We're laughing because we can't believe what we thought we heard.
We never heard the dog the rest of the weekend. We have no idea what happened.