Suntrap

     Sunday evening we had dinner with friends.  We met early so that we could eat outside and enjoy the sunshine.  The weather cooperated, and we dined on their deck, overlooking their lush oasis of a yard while their waterfall burbled in the background.  Birds visited feeders, and a hummingbird hovered nearby for a while, watching us watching it.  The food was a labor of love, every offering a marvel.  At dusk, we moved to the dining room for tea and dessert.  We spoke of matters national, international, and astronomical, and we spoke of affection.  “You are the first people to eat at this table for a year and a half,” they told us.  We deeply appreciated being there and spending time with friends of long standing.

     Sue and Tesla and I went for a walk a couple days later, through the woods this time.  The paths wound up and down hills, sometimes with switchbacks, and we chatted as we have since we were thirteen.  “What woods is this?” I asked after a while.  “Black Pond Woods,” she said, pointing.  And there was the pond.  I’d seen it once before, years ago.  It’s a vernal pond, relying entirely on rain and runoff as water sources.  It’s also full of tannins from leaf litter, which stain the water a dark brown—hence the name.

     This time Black Pond wasn’t brown.  It was a resplendent green, due to the layer of duckweed floating on it.  Duckweed consists of a zillion tiny shapes, each one a separate plant, and each one intensely green in the autumn light.  The parks department has built a boardwalk over a section of the pond, with a sign saying not to disturb it.  Given the opacity of both the duckweed and the water beneath, it was hard to tell if we were disturbing the pond or not. 

As we stepped onto the boardwalk, the water near us billowed.  Some small critter made three quick holes in the duckweed from underneath.  A minnow fleeing a predator?  An acorn I bumped off the boardwalk vanished into the water.  An acorn-snatching platypus?  A large leaf the same color as the duckweed lay floating near the boardwalk.  Droplets of water, large and small, beaded on the leaf. On the duckweed on the dark water of the pond under the canopy of trees in the afternoon sun.  The beauty in that woods was layers deep. 

     I phoned my friend Janice this week to ask after her new deck.  “Is it being built?”  “Yes, it is.”  “Do you love it?”  “I love it so far.  Do you want to come see it?”  “Yes.”  “Good.  I’ll make tea.”  I walked through our yards, and there was the new deck.  And on the deck were two metal folding chairs.  Janice and I carried our tea outside and sat in the chairs, followed shortly by her husband, delivering an end table from the living room and a placemat for the top.  We thanked him and set our drinks on it. 

“This is the first time anyone’s sat on the deck,” Janice announced.  Peter came out to commemorate the event with his first-ever smart phone.  He did this a number of times while we sat there, learning more and more about his phone.  We all found the process interesting and agreed that the new deck sat well.  Lisa came over from next door to join in the oohs and aahs.  It was a low-key celebration of life in the neighborhood.

     I went outside to do some gardening this week and saw one of our neighbors and the neighbors’ cat out enjoying the warm afternoon.  I petted Herbie for a while, then joined Tanya on their porch, which is sheltered by plantings and brick walls.  We spoke of matters consequential and inconsequential, and Herbie purred while we petted him some more.

     “This is a delightful spot,” I said.  “It’s a real suntrap,” she agreed.  What a lovely idea:  a suntrap.  Would that we could capture and hold these autumn days.  The nutty smell in the woods.  The taste of freshly picked tomatoes.  The sound of acorns hitting the ground and bouncing.  The warm fur of a basking cat.  The beauty all around us.  And lingering moments with those we hold dear.            

1 October 2021