End of Summer (August 2025)

If you're listening, the cicadas will tell you the season. The crickets will give you the time of day. Lightning bugs can’t tell you much of anything anymore. On such a quiet day at the end of the summer when most of the neighbourhood is away, people noise seems to get drowned out by nature.

It’s early evening in one of the last hot days of summer. In the twilight, thin pinkish-orange lines contrails mark up the sky like an Etch a Sketch, morphing into strange geometries and exploding into streams of pastel cotton candy as they float by. Hundreds, no, probably thousands of people are up there floating past on their way to or from YYZ.

Our bench faces due west, looking out over a two-hectare field of manicured turf. On soccer field #1, a few left-behind kids are practicing penalty kicks, only one of them brave enough to be the keeper. The dog whines to be let off leash, but she has a taste for what is but shouldn’t be left behind—so, “No way.” There's just one little fellow on soccer field #2, but he’s deftly managing the air traffic of two drones all on his own. His peers over on #1 keep an eye out for stray maneuvers, intentional not. From the north, the early evening tennis “Faults” mix in with the kickers’ F-word frustrations, at times in an alternating rhythm.

As the last of twilight fades, our days continuously shortening, the lumpy escarpment of spruces and maples on the far side of the soccer pitches silhouettes the final stages of the day. Moving ever so slowly, the scattered cirrostratus clouds float towards the top of the dome of the sky.

In the dark, on the way home, the air is redolent with the overripe smell of August’s unwanted crabapples that squish juicily underfoot. It’s a sad smell that jars with the season of Thanksgiving that’s just a month-and-a-half away. Further on, in one of the narrow walkways that leads out of the park, the rotting, fruity smell is thoroughly erased by the scent of skunk, now familiar to the dog, so we’re both eager to quickly scoot through the laneway and out into the cul-de-sac.

Halfway home, the sounds of a late summer party greet us just as we turn onto one of the roads leading through the MacMansion quarter. There’s boisterous singing coming from the backyard. Seems relatively good-natured and harmless, but if you live next door it might make you think of a celebration after a rugby match.

Once home, there’s one last port of call for the dog. That gets hurried along at the sound of a mouse trap snapping shut. Then comes the more worrying sound of a wire being pulled through the hedge. Seconds later, a window slams shut.