It’s hot.
Summer has its hold upon us, and we are in full sweat.
The middle of the day is warm and still; the afternoon, suffocating.
No breeze, no benevolent clouds.
When I was a boy, my grandmother Rosa Ellen Lockhart would caution me at the beginning of Dog Days, in early July, when the sun and the Dog Star Sirius are in conjunction.
The gentle matriarch believed this alignment unleashed the Dog Days—those long, hot, sultry days of summer.
“Johnnie,” she’d warn in her musical Lockhart voice, “Stay out of the woods. The snakes are blind and they’ll strike at the least noise.”
Grandmother’s admonitions were sufficient to frighten me to the very threshold of terror.
Not only did I shun the woods like the plague, but I also dodged all dogs—for fear of rabies. I somehow linked the two seemingly unrelated phenomena.
Over the years, I’ve often wondered if country folk still honor the celestial occurrence of Dog Days with the reverence my ancestors did.
What exactly are Dog Days, anyway?
Most people know that they are supposed to be hot and humid days of the mid-summer season.
Dog Days are named after the Dog Star, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major—the Big Dog—and by far the brightest star in all the heavens.
The Dog Star is more properly known as Sirius (pronounced like “serious”), a name from ancient Greek which apparently means something like “scorching.”
If we’re lucky enough to be relaxing at home, we’re ensconced in a hammock or lawn chair, nursing a sweating glass of iced tea, and staring out at the waves of heat that infuses the day with a kind of waking dream quality.
These are the notorious dog days of summer, a time when the bright star Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major, rises with the sun.
The shimmering heat of the day usually translates into twinkling stars at night and boiling images in the telescope.
Summer is hot because the sun beats down from nearly overhead and for a longer time each day compared to winter.
During the dog days, more heat is being put in the surface of the earth than taken out: the planet’s surface cannot radiate solar heat away into space fast enough to keep the surface cool.
Instead, heat accumulates, even though the sun is already heading south. Not until the heating rate falls below the cooling rate does the temperature begin to fall, and we sense the coming of autumn.
In ancient times, people in places like Egypt and Greece likewise associated the dog days with Sirius in Canis Major, the Greater Dog. Sirius is called the Dog Star partly because it is the brightest star in the Greater Dog, but also because it acts as a sentinel.
The star’s timely appearance in the east in August gave ancient Egyptians enough warning to prepare for the annual inundation of their fields by the Nile. Hence, the Egyptians likened Sirius’ appearance to that of a barking dog warning its master of peril.
Just like today, July marked the onset of the hot, humid weather of summer. Hence, the Egyptians came to associate the unusually hot days with this star.
Some Greeks speculated that Sirius’ brilliant light rays combined with those of the sun, thus compounding the heat and creating the associated torpor of summer. The Romans called the 40-day period from July 3 to August 11 the “dog days.”
Of course, Sirius doesn’t really contribute to the summer heat. It’s just a bright star that flickers like a windblown candle flame, especially when seen near the horizon. This mad sparkling makes it look as if it has burning rays, but from more than eight light years away, and they don’t faze Earth in the slightest.
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So, you wonder why you aren’t catching any fish?
Ever stop to think that it might be Dog Days?
After all, it is possible that our finny prey begins hiding under rocks and fallen trees to avoid the onslaught of scorching midday heat.
But how do we know that for sure? For one thing, the heady malaises that often plague anglers this time of year are repeated every summer season on creeks, rivers, and lakes in the Mountain State, where the sport generally is without hiatus or interruption during spring and autumn.
Well, Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, shines at the throat of the Great Dog and trots at Orion’s heel.
From earliest times, astronomers have called it the “Dog Star.”
In summer, from early July or so until mid-August, depending on latitude, Sirius rises and sets with the sun, as a great dog should, I suppose.
As the earth orbits Old Sol, Sirius becomes lost to us in solar glare by the beginning of May.
Then, after reaching conjunction with the sun in early July, Sirius begins to creep slowly back into view in the morning twilight, becoming visible by the latter part of August.
For anglers, the hottest part of the year is in Yogi’s words, “Deja vu all over again” where there are low, clear flows, warming water; overgrown banks, and moody, lethargic fish.
Stagnant air presses on the landscape for weeks, and you fish in sluggish, slow-motion. By mid-morning, heat shimmers off roadways like a desert mirage, and the sun hammers your nose and ears.
The idea that the hottest season of the year is ushered in by the reappearance of the brightest star in our azure firmament is at least 5,000 years old.
In ancient Egypt, Sirius reappeared several months earlier than it does today because of precession, that slow gyration of the earth’s poles, which, with the passing centuries, causes the stars to appear to slip generally eastward with respect to the sky’s reference circles.
Sirius is one of the few stars identified with absolute certainty in the ancient Egyptian records.
The star’s hieroglyph was a dog.
The appearance in the morning sky just before sunrise was a major event in ancient Egypt—signaling the rising of the Nile’s floodwaters.
The Egyptians believed that the Dog Star, called Sothis, brought the inundation of the river’s delta, renewing the fertility of the fields.
By the time of the Greeks and Romans, however, Sirius had lost favor as the purveyor of life and was thought to bring forth only fever and madness (possibly the source of my unconscious connection with “mad dogs”).
A scholarly mythology pupil once pointed out to me that Homer compared the glint on the armor of Achilles to the blaze of the Dog Star, going on to tell us how unhealthy it was:
“His burning breath taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death.”
In the eighth century B.C., the Greek poet Hesiod wrote: “When Sirius parches head and knees, and the body is dried up by reason of heat, then sit in the shade and drink.”
Virgil instructed the farmer to sow his millet at the star’s heliacal appearance and wrote in the Aeneid: “The Dog Star, that burning constellation, when he brings drought and disease on sickly mortals, rises and saddens the sky with inauspicious light.”
Indeed, the Romans set about sacrificing young dogs to the star when it began to approach the sun’s twilight glow in May, and it was they who coined the phrase “dies canisulariae,” or “dog days.”
Shakespeare set the start of his tale of Romeo and Juliet at this time of year. In this story of passion, temper, and “star-crossed” lovers, Benvolio says: “In these days is the mad blood stirring.”
I’ve often wondered if couples get married in June to avoid the “hot, thirsty, scorching, burning” summer season—Dog Days.
Just imagine the fiery passions that await young lovers on their honeymoon once they have consummated their nuptials at the ecclesiastical altar and arrived at their fabled love nest destination.
It’s hot alright.
Summer has its hold upon us, and we are all in full sweat.
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Top of the morning!