Indian summer.

The river felt ten feet lower, pilings and riprap exposed. I found a spot and lobbed the bait downstream of the rock dike, where the channel spread out into a languid eddy. Small fish bend the tip of the rod almost immediately, too small to hook themselves. It’s a nice way of reading a book.

Most of the weekend was given over to putting the garden to bed- pulling pumpkins and peppers, beans and cowpeas, ahead of frost, along with the cannas and fig and other tender plants. Cleaning, chores, bringing order to chaos, before knocking off on a nice evening to go down to the river.

I chuckled to myself at the car that this may be the last opportunity for a sunburn this year. The cottonwoods are shedding clear yellow leaves that go racing against the current. Two kids, college kids, amble out onto the rock dike maybe a hundred yards away. One was on the phone with a friend they’d left behind, going round and around as to who was at fault. They caught two fish on accident, and left before sunset.

I stayed past dark, listening to screech owls and crickets and katydids, coyotes calling from one side of the river to the other.