Oh dear, I’m supposed to write something to you now! Jerry says, “That’s just you, you don’t have to.” But you know how I am, some of you do. I give myself these requirements. It’s been generally a good thing. It’s probably how I got a Ph.D., how I’ve stuck to meditating every day for a bunch of years, how I keep my lower back from flaring up by doing my stretches every day.
Ten ducks were under the dock, and then there they go, back out into the lake. Why they were under the dock, I don’t know. Was there something fearful? I don’t see any large bird. I don’t see our resident snapping turtle. It’s a whopper, by the way. I shouldn’t announce its presence because the guys who put in and take out our dock every year won’t want to come back. It greeted them one year, scared the dickens out of them. But snappers want to be left alone. If you just quietly go your way, they’ll go theirs. Which can be said for a lot of people, too. If you don’t come storming through with your trucks and flags and paint guns, people will be gentle and quiet, generally. Of course, as with turtles, there are exceptions.
While we were eating lunch on the deck, a tiny gray mouse poked its head out of the dead leaves and scared the squirrel that was foraging under the feeder. It scooted back under the leaves and you could watch the leaves bubble up as it traveled away. This is how we spend our days. Everything counts more when things are quiet this way. Well, not quiet. A great noisy boat goes by, too big for our lake, only a momentary annoyance.
Sometimes I launch into thinking of what’s not here anymore—native crawdads under the dock, great schools of minnows, live clams in the sand, bats at night, granddaddy long legs climbing up the walls of the house. Of course all the people I miss in this pandemic time. Which may be why the lone bald eagle across the perfectly blue sky seems so dramatic I feel like crying.
The world is more empty. Since I can’t fix that, at least not so much, I just soak up what is here. I love that snapper. It has a tail like a fierce stub of a whip. Short, muscular. When it occasionally pokes its head up, it is almost the size of my fist. It’s probably been here for years. Once I saw some children dragging a huge turtle up to shore down by the town dock. I have never forgotten my horror as they killed it and the adults joked about what good turtle soup it would make.
I’ve gotten used to quiet. People are getting awkward socially, said a recent article in the New York Times. We’re forgetting how to be with each other, being alone so much. I guess. I’m always a little suspicious of the “we” that’s supposed to describe the generic mileau. Writers like me have always spent a lot of time alone, which might explain why we’re a bit awkward in groups.
I don’t listen to music much when I’m alone. At the moment, I’m listening to the aspen leaves clapping against each other, and chickadees, ducks, the beginning of the fall crickets, and water lapping on the stones. (I suppose I shouldn’t sit on the dock with my computer.)
When one duck gets separated from the others, it starts quacking. Maybe it’s a mother calling her brood. I don’t know. I just notice the duck-talk when one duck is alone, and then the change in tone when another arrives.
The days are beginning to take on a golden glow, even before the leaves are turning. By early September in northern Michigan, you can feel the shift. The ferns, first to go, are curling up and browning.
See, I really did have nothing to say. All I can really do is point out what’s here, let you in on it, too.
Louise Penny has a new mystery! There’s that. Inspector Gamache’s godfather said to him, as a young boy, after both his parents were killed in a car crash:
“Life can be cruel, as you know. But it can also be kind. Filled with wonders. You need to remember that. You have your own choice to make, Armand. What’re you going to focus on? What’s unfair, or all of the wonderful things that happen? Both are true, both are real. Both need to be accepted. But which carries more weight with you?” Stephen tapped the boy’s chest. “The terrible or the wonderful? The goodness or the cruelty? Your life will be decided by that choice.”
P.S. Now I have two books coming out next year! My collection of essays, “Mortality, with Friends,” will be published by Wayne State University Press in fall 2021. It’ll be good to have a book from a Michigan Press. Now there’s all the preliminary work to do, including the dreaded marketing survey that asks me to list everyone in the world I know, every bookstore and contact (names, addresses, emails), so the press can contact them. Generally, presses do precious little in the way of helping authors sell their books these days. I’m grateful that Wayne State seems to be better than most at this.