Walking at Dusk

It had been a happy Sunday dinner at my niece’s house.  Her energetic children, Tommy and Abby, just three and five, and my grandson Jackson, nine, played quietly and happily with Tommy and Abby’s puppy and their birthday presents.

I was tired; I had stayed up way too late the night before roasting and carving a turkey breast, washing the turkey roaster, finishing my book.

At dusk Ox asked me to go to the park.  I was reluctant, but I knew that I’d miss it if I didn’t go.  We drove to the upper pond.  The park was sparsely populated; a few people strolled here and there.

We climbed out of Ox’s car into soft, balmy air.  Two high pitches of trills announced that the American toads were mating.  The trills were punctuated with the song of the spring peepers.  A lone black-bird called from the very top of a tall tree.  Frogs roiled the waters by the cattails.  The vigor of the frogs comforts me, it shows the vigor of the pond.

We walked around to the south side of the pond. The other people left the park.  Though the moon had risen, the sky was darker - scuds of cloud blew past the moon.  A few geese flew onto the pond from the west, with quiet low honks.  Ox thought he saw a wake.

“Oh,” I said, “it’s just a goose or a duck.”

“ No,” he said, “It’s a beaver.  I can see the tail.  He’s almost black, darker than beavers we’ve had here before."

I looked again.  It was a beaver, smaller than the last beaver, last seen10 years ago.  He dove.  Five minutes later or so he surfaced about 15 feet to the east.  His wake, a silver V, reminded of all the wakes of all the beavers that lived for a short while in the pond.

The night was darker.  We walked slowly back to the car.  A toad jumped away from my descending foot, visible only in his motion.