A season passes

The nights are cool enough now that I close most windows. Evening comes earlier. Tomatoes and summer squash have past their peak. It’s time. I’ve known it was coming for weeks. The calendar told me, the deep orange sunsets, even the bees. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready.

I know I’m not alone. I’ve seen this ache in others. All week I’ve watched families back trailers down the beach to take boats from the lake. I’ve seen more than one evening kayaker oaring her way under the pink late-summer sky, under maple trees with red fringed leaves. Yesterday I met a family from Ohio on a bend of the Appalachian Trail. Their arms were full of picnic baskets, blankets and sweaters – just in case.

This morning there were no children at the beach, no lifeguards, just me and the geese practicing their V-flight, in preparation for their annual journey to warmer skies. I was alone, and the water was cooler than yesterday, more than I’d admit aloud. This swim would be my last here for the year, so I lingered, floating first on my back, then prone, then on my back again. Even the clouds told me. Their strong shapes have given way to wispy white streaks of fall.

Two red foxes appear daily now at the edge of the woods near our cottage. My neighbor tells me they are building a den away from the bog they’ve played near all summer. The coyotes are more active than ever. For two nights in a row I woke to their yips and howls, and went to the back window which faces a green ledge, a gentle rise above a stream. Though they weren’t visible to me, I imagined that the coyotes’ moonlit silhouettes exaggerated their rangy frames, and that they appeared as near ghosts – thin and almost as transparent as they will become by late January.

Just down the road Joe Lanue, 92 this year, spends his days chopping and stacking wood. I can hear his chainsaw as I write this, and it gives me hope for the future. He is preparing as he always has. I almost look forward to the crisp air and first snow if it means he will sit snug in his small house burning his evenly chopped wood.

I have prepared as best I know how for the end of summer. I’ve placed fabric softener sheets on the furniture in the cabin. (My friend’s mother swears moths flee from the scent.) Bedclothes are stripped. Windows locked. Water heater turned off. Anti-freeze in the toilet and down the drains. The birdfeeder has been brought inside, the refrigerator cleaned out. The cottage has been put away. And just like that another summer goes gently to sleep.