Crisping Towards the Shadowlands

On the way up to the cabin this last weekend of summer, Brian and I had a chance to drive alone in "the living room" (the Tundra), while all five kids accompanying us squeezed into the 4-Runner, which happens to have no air conditioning. Five teenagers. 91 degrees. No air conditioning.

On the way up, Brian waxed nostalgic about the fact that Maggie and her Cal friends are performing the same ritual we practiced with our UCLA pals twenty some odd years ago. And there it was. The geezer factor. In that one careless, wistful observation, the older generation zeroed in, locked on, plucked us out of our delusions of youth, and enfolded us into its ranks. All those years stealthily ducking it since the kids made us parents, admittance came sooner and more nimbly into our partnership than I planned. Sighing heavily, I stared out the window as we passed over John Day's Hill leading into the Coastal Range. Within moments, I began to notice the flora and fauna passing by fading ever so slightly into soft sepia shades of light and shadow. A faint crisping sounded in my ear, as though pine needles, oak leaves, manzanita, mountain thistle, fennel, grasses and weeds lining that road, in one united sigh of their own, surrendered to autumn sooner than they expected.

We did a lot of water skiing Saturday. I had a brief run, but it was the run of my life. I leaned back, weightless, and sailed intrepidly back and forth across the wake. In the end, though, I paid dearly for that fearless flight. Oh, did I pay! That night, vertigo packed a punch that kept me wrestling with a spinning tent and sleeplessness. For some reason, I remained uncharacteristically calm in my solitude through that Gravelly night. Through the fine tent mesh overhead, I watched the gun-metal gray sky darken to black as the waxing gibbous moon dropped out of sight. Stars popped brilliantly against the infinite blackness. A barn owl screeched in a nearby tree. A great-horned neighbor's hollowed answers echoed back. Drying leaves rustled overhead. No creek sounds this late in a drought year. I dropped in and out of sleep until one last waking, I witnessed with relief the steel blue light of dawn. I dropped into two delicious hours of still sleep. After rising, I sat in one of the worn wicker chairs out in the field, drinking coffee with Brian. The mid morning sun warmed our backs as we stared out at over the grasses, crusty and pale.

A few hours later, the kids awoke, one by one, zipped open tents, and lumbered towards the cabin, shedding their slumber over the dusty footpaths. A dozen scrambled eggs, a dart game, and some slapdash packing, and off they set for the three-hour drive home. Five teenagers. No air conditioning. But a mere 78 degrees at that point. Carla from Milan, in the U.S. scoping out grad schools, had to catch her flight to New York that night. Malcolm planned to meet a friend at the ferry building in the city. Maggie, Kay, and Andre still had to buy their books for classes the next day. Brian and I found ourselves in a refreshingly bizarre situation: no plans ahead.

Without words to mark this alien occasion, we set about breaking camp. In silence, I disassembled tents, collected the kerosene lanterns, carried chairs back into the cabin, stuffed sleeping bags, repacked food bags and cooler, and secured the wool blankets back into their mothball-filled metal lockbox. After that, while Brian neatened the fencing over the grapevines, checked the water pipes, and cleaned the cabin, I sat on the tailgate munching granola. Buddy's ears perked, alerting me to the sight of a goldfinch fidgeting on a lantern hook. The blue jay's nest sagged out of the bat box, its fledglings long decamped from its twiggy womb. At the far edge of the field, from out of the creek alders, two grazing deer signaled a tentative moment of harmony with the wilds of nature beyond.

Fresh from the shower, Brian shuttered the cabin, packed the trash in the truck bed, closed up the tailgate, shut the truck's back doors, and settled into the seat beside me. He popped a breath mint, kissed me on the lips, and started up the engine for the drive home. As we pulled out of the gravelly driveway, I tuned the iPod to John Mellancamp, leaned back and looked out across the valley. It had been a great summer.