The squirrels are chowing down on the White Pine cones. There’s one over there eating one as you might eat a cob of corn. Eating one and then hopping over to the base of a different tree to inspect the fallen cones for a follow-on course. And he just found one right there half the distance from me as where he was just a moment ago. The crowd here is gone. It is just the squirrels and I. They were patient with us. Now soon the place will be theirs again.
A orange-golden sun just descended behind the pines across the lake, it’s rays of dying light stabbing shards of glow into the forest over here on the eastern shore, lighting up tree trunks that had begun to fade in evening gloom, now shining with a momentary sheen.
I text my cousin to ask about sheets and about dog biscuits. We talk about putting chairs in the attic. And life jackets. And so on.
“Have a good trip,” he says, as if to say that I should enjoy the last fleeting moments of my last summer evening here. Our grandfather would have said the same thing.
I reply with a picture.
“Not shabby at all,” he replies.
“Nope. Not too shabby,” I reply back.
And with that perhaps we can just declare the evening chores done and this chair to be for sitting.