The Last Light of Indian Summer

We've had our first snow...it's come and has gone, leaving only layers of mist. Add to this the fog; the drizzle and rain squalls marching on toward Montana, followed by the next round moving up the valleys with a deep chill. Summer has gone and so have the summer people and the snowbirds.

The hunters will soon depart too. Some bearing trophy racks. Others only bearing empty six packs and near missed shots that are the stuff of tales told at the gun counter at Cabela's or Outdoorsmans Warehouse. The woods will quiet, the high country roads are already inaccessible with snow and gates and the meanest elements in the lower 48.

Then, in a month or two, the snowmobile (or "snow machine" as Lady Palin and Prince Todd have informed us) people will replace the marksman. One night I counted a caravan of diesel pushers heading south out of Oldtown back toward Texas or California-each of them pulling trailers packed full of toys. I figured ten million dollars easy had just passed.

Most of my friends can't afford a snow machine. Or skies. Or a lift ticket.

The lumber mills-- many of them have closed up here as timber prices are crashing. Soon another two will shutter. My friend John is racing to get in as many logs to the mill before they close up as well.

Locals can get in and out Safeway in under 15 minutes. The lines at the cashiers don't stretch down the aisles. You don't have to park at the recently closed Ford Dealership or across the street in Idaho anymore.

With the summer people gone, that also means that the good folks at the Newport McDonalds only have an 80% chance of screwing up your order. How amazing that a Big Mac will only cost you a 15 minute wait instead of the 45 minutes or more it takes during peak season. It'll still have onions, even though you asked for none, and it'll still look like someone threw it all the way across the fry line, but at least it will arrive mostly still warm.

Fuel is now at $1.95 for regular, unleaded and $2.99 for diesel. A nice second wind for those who still have a little wind left in their sails.

Yet as abandoned as it feels up here, this renewed quiet of late fall, with all the signage of a small town reflecting on undisturbed, wet pavement, seems a needed pause. The river glides by not a ripple on her surface until the next time the sky falls down on us. And we look at our summer and fall pictures and we wonder, was it really that bright? That non-stop?

And in the morning's squall's gales, we'll hear wildly whipping monopoly banners. Flying into the roof at McDonalds, they will make the only sound in the restaurant, as the rain blurs the windows, and here finally feels like home again.

Walton's like--Here is the kind of place you build a fire and grab a book and a pillow and just let life ease up. The pacing of a hamlet where seasons have color, and then they don't, keeps everything in order and predictable in a not very statistical sort of way. Here in late Autumn, I feel as if hibernation is a sabbatical of the richest kind.

Even if it is only for just a season.