Away

The last day of June.  After a couple of rainy days it is hot in earnest, and due to be hotter the next couple of days. With the first of the summer renters coming on Friday, we will hit the road in our Casita on Thursday.  This last week has been bittersweet. Sunnyhill seems even more beautiful as we prepare to leave it. Jay and Dan built two excellent patios, front and back, and they lure us outside even more.  In the afternoon the back patio has shade, and in the evening the front patio has the sunset. We sit out front and watch the lightshow and listen to the evening concert.  Jay tosses the ball for Charlie.  When we were still in Palo Alto, taking Charlie to the park for playtime, Jay would tell Charlie that soon all we would have to do is step outside to play ball on our own hill. Arriving in winter, it was a dream deferred. But now they are out, morning and evening unless the game is rained out.

Sitting out front we watch the tree swallows swooping across the lawn and over the fields, too many to count. Between the hungry swallows and the nearly constant hill breeze, the air is almost entirely bug free. Especially for Jay, whose pheromones called out to every mosquito in Amenia, this is a joy. We are undisturbed. The swallows twitter from every direction, backed by the watery calls of redwinged blackbirds in the higher grass of the fields.  Some unseen bird sings a sweet, clear note, sometimes two in sequence.  A bobwhite? As evening deepens the frogs join in from the pond off to the north and from the boggy place to the west of Gulf Road, calling back and forth. Are they communicating with each other, with the birds, or saying their own separate pieces, each alone, each feeling night coming?

At night, especially after rain, there are fireflies everywhere, blinking on and off, magical. The moon is waning now, but earlier in the week it was full and stunning, rising behind clouds, filling them with silver moonlight. Jupiter was already well up in the sky, easy to see even with some clouds and the bright moonlight. Later, there is Saturn, and later still, Mars rises, distinctly reddish. The moon stays up through the night, fading into the daylight before it sets. Here on the hill a lunar calendar makes more sense. Time is more clearly marked from phase to phase than by the counting of days. But twelve lunar months are too few to match up with seasons for snow, for planting, for harvest.  And thirteen every year are too many. So the Hebrews add an extra month, the second Adar, every two or three years, for seven extra months every nineteen years. Still, it’s a day short every 216 years. Don’t ask how they calculate the start and end of the day and the (varying) length of an hour.  It’s not practical for modern folk, but it’s not arbitrary, like midnight, either.

This morning there was mist above every valley we can see from the hill. Charlie and I went out to take some pictures, but I couldn’t capture what I could see. The alternation of a dark, tree covered hill, with a white float of mist filled me with a joy I can’t account for. The frogs were welcoming the day, but softly, not with the grand chorus of nightfall. Charlie trotted through the wet grass and wandered into Zen’s pasture.  Zen must have heard us or smelled us and came around from behind the barn, coal black against the light filled mist over the pond. Dan hasn’t been spending as much time as usual with him, and he’s lonely. Charlie ran at him, barking, and Zen just lowered his big head and swung it toward Charlie, perhaps in greeting.  But they don’t speak the same language, and Charlie turned and ran, barking bravely over his shoulder a couple of times.

After breakfast it was off to the farmers’ market, our Saturday morning ritual. I said goodbye to vendors I won’t see again until the end of the summer.  The place is bursting with variety now, glossy deep green squash, sweet orange carrots, white cauliflower, deep red cherries, and more and more. The resting winter faces of the farmers are replaced by the yawns of people who were up before the early first light. Even with the fatigue, there is the joy of abundance.  Plenty to do, but also plenty to sell, and tourists have joined the small winter band of local customers. The tourists bring traffic, and challenges parking and getting in to restaurants, but most of all, they bring money. The three summer months are when Cooperstown makes its living, when anyone who wants to work can. The solar powered parking meters, brought out just for the season, bring in the revenue that repairs streets. Most of the tourists will be gone by Labor Day.  We’ll be back for the tail end of the season, back to see the crowds thin at the farmers’ market, and to see the return of plentiful free parking. Next year we’ll see all of summer. But this year we’ll be on the road in our tidy little Casita, visiting family and friends across the northern part of the country and down the west coast. We’re looking forward to the road and the visits, but we will miss our hill.