Eventide

The setting sun dropped like a fluorescent orange ball behind the trees as two men swam in the deep water beside our drifting pontoon boat: one mid-50’s, the other mid-60’s. We women watched our husbands from the boat and cheered their silly pranks.  They were still boys at heart, joking and laughing and pretending to sink out of sight like rocks. 

I stood on the boat’s front platform to watch, and couldn’t help but think how natural it seemed, as if of course older men are supposed to play like this.  Of course they’re really still double-dare-ya teenagers down underneath the wrinkles and balding.

When they climbed back on board the sun had vanished, leaving us in a subdued twilight zone.  We continued on our tour of a channel and adjacent lake where we happened upon a couple of beavers, also enjoying an evening swim.  With the boat motor turned off, we visually followed the progress of their gentle wakes toward a far shore.  A nearby blue heron also watched from his half-hidden spot in the cattails. 

How natural and yet miraculous, I thought, to belong here, to belong to each other.  To belong to the world around us, the fading minutes of this day, and the God who brought it all into being with love and continues to love it all into completion until the last day.