While it isn’t the last weekend of summer according to the calendar, it certainly is in accordance with our shared culture.  The long Labor Day weekend has always marked summer’s conclusion in the United States, for the school years in districts across the land have either begun by then or will begin the following week, and offices and factories always return to full intensity in September, an intensity with which they will operate until the conclusion of the afore-mentioned school year. In short, our society’s focus is back on tight beam, or soon will be after a week or two of remembering how to bear down. To put it another way, we are standing in the shallow end of the trench that is our usual rut, and dipping our toes into its waters as we await the full immersion that is but a week or two away.
But I’m not. For the first September since I turned 6, I do not have to return to school or to work.  For I have aged like a fine red wine past its time of drinkability; I have aged to the point of becoming truly feckless and irrelevant to the common cause. For I have well and truly become an Old Fart, and intend to wear that honor with distinction, if only I can figure out what it is Old Farts are expected to do.
I have had ample time for reflection on this issue, for Humptulips County’s summer this year has been exemplary: the weather has been nigh on perfect; the days were sweetly lived and appreciated to the full; time’s passage was a regular, steadfast affair, and not the hasty rush to judgment it so often was during my working years; the evenings were replete with the lengthening shadows that succor my heart and my soul, routinely occurring, as they did, under unclouded skies open to the heavens’ various lights. Coming as this summer did upon the heels of our European river cruise, it was simultaneously the perfect antidote for weary travelers, and the perfect pick-me-up cocktail for the impending fall. This summer was, for me at least, a re-education as to what it means to be unencumbered, a lesson in the joys of non-commitment.
This is not to say that I have nothing to do. In fact, there is much on my plate, ranging from active service on the boards of several charities serving purposes near and dear to my heart, to an attempt to create the book that each of us says we will write some day – the book I am actually writing, the proto-book now in its fifth draft, the incipient tome which has developed a life of its own and which demands most of my mornings.  And I still offer occasional advice to a few close friends, advice worth just as much as the fees I am not charging for its offering. For I’ve found the best fees for services rendered are those for which I don’t have to take the time and trouble of preparing an invoice; the kinds of fees which are best paid in the coin of friendship.
But summer still has Labor Day Weekend to keep it alive a bit longer.Ă On this, the first day of that weekend, I can only stop to count my blessings: relatively good health; a staunch and caring family; a loving wife and companion; good and true friends; a beautiful farm requiring just enough maintenance to keep muscles from atrophying; a plethora of interesting challenges which take enough of my time to keep me from intellectual boredom; an abundance of books yet to be read and at least one whose writing is yet to be completed; flocks of goldfinches feeding regularly at our outside feeder; three love birds in a cage in our sun-room providing enough noise and play to make lively what would otherwise be an inordinately quiet home and a humdrum existence; and four cats who tolerate our existence as long as we remember to keep them well served with food and water and to appreciate them on their terms, not ours.
Life is good, for the accumulation of these items surely beats a partridge in a pear tree any day of the week, and I don’t have to wait for the holiday season to enjoy them.
