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Some August Day
- University of Wisconsin Press
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3 Some August Day Some August day, usually late in the month, the jet stream buckles and bends south, and cold Canadian air pours down into Wisconsin, displacing the thick air that has stagnated over the area for much of the summer. Some years this cold might not arrive until September, but every year it comes. I think about starting a small fire in the woodstove, but right now the cool feels bracing, a relief. Summer will make a comeback, the warm air pushing back the dense, cool air to the north. Surely the heat and humidity will return and September will again be a time of cold beer and barbeques, but the chill reminds me of what’s to come. Already the sumacs up the hill are blood red, burning with color. A few sentinel maples to the east of our house and some down in the valley have also reddened and yellowed. Asters bloom in the ditches, and our tomatoes have finally ripened. Daylight is noticeably shorter as the sun slides to the south, angling in our windows more obliquely and with lessening strength each passing day. 4 My dogs sense the change too. When the temperature climbs to 90 degrees or higher, heat waves shimmering above the asphalt, they move deliberately, seeking the shade at every opportunity, and they know where all the buckets of water are placed around the yard. Some days they don’t even seem to want to go on their daily walk, but I’d probably feel the same way if I wore a fur coat and could only sweat through my tongue. As summer creeps toward autumn, the first cool evening arrives, stirring me to pull my tattered Filson vest out of the front closet. Like the smell of gunpowder, the musty smell of my old vest evokes past hunts in past places. A wave of Proustian memories rolls through my mind, the dank, waxed cotton smell drawing sights and sounds up out of the black well of my subconscious. My clearest memory is of one of the first days I wore the vest, an early September morning before the season had begun. In the cover we walked stood a brilliant maple tree looking as if it were on fire, like the burning bush of Moses, and my vest always reminds me of that tree on that clear day: a few of the leaves scattered in the grass about the trunk, red on green, me in my shiny crisp vest, the waxed cotton still stiff as cardboard , the dog young, dancing at the foot of the tree, whining to keep moving on. Many years later the dancing dog was gone, but I still had the vest, the left shoulder black and shiny from the autumns of my shotgun resting and bumping there. One of the front buttons was dangling precariously and would not last the season unless resewn. My boots looked like they needed oiling, and I really had to buy a new blaze orange hat as the old one’s color had faded to dull pumpkin. Early Season [54.226.94.217] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:06 GMT) 5 Rummaging in the closet, I found the whistle and Swiss bell and rang it ever so softly, one quiet clank. Ox popped up off the floor out of a deep sleep and bolted over to the closet, skidding into me across the maple boards. He was ready, just as if he had an on/off switch. I walked out onto the screened porch, bell in hand, and Ox followed, nudging the hand holding the bell and nibbling my wrist with his little front teeth. The sun had dropped below the neighbor’s roofline, the sky turning from deep blue to purple. Already the waxing moon had climbed into the darkening eastern sky. It felt as though there could be a touch of frost in the morning. I walked back into the house, closing the door to contain the heat in the house. “Tomorrow morning, Oxie. Tomorrow morning,” I promised. After I stashed the vest and bell back in the closet, he slumped over to his pad, plopped down, and curled head to tail, pouting. He couldn’t see past the disappointment of the moment, but I knew what the morning would bring. No delicate frost glazed the lawn overnight, the temperature merely dipping to just below 40, but it was plenty cool for us to get into the woods...