The street was already in shadow when I walked east in the cool air, with all the trees bright above me. At the edge of town, where the land rises to the last ridge, the dried grasses of the still-sunlit field were bright. Above the bright trees that border the field, the pale moon, nearly full, floated like a translucent bubble in the blue bath of sky. Idly, I kicked the freshly fallen acorns to the verge of the road.
At the top of the hill, a group of boys, still immortal, were playing soccer in the intersection. The sound of the ball being kicked, and bouncing on the pavement, and the sound of their exuberant shouts, followed me as I continued south along the last street. As the noise of their game faded, I heard the chattering sound of a lawn sprinkler in a front yard, and saw the water arc up into the nearly horizontal rays of the sun, where the droplets glittered and a golden mist rose toward the burnished treetops. An invisible cloud of moisture drifted across my path, chilly and fresh.
A bit further down the street, a pair of cats sat on a front porch, having their after-dinner wash. At the last cross street, I looked west, and saw the three pine trees at the end of the block silhouetted against silver and dusty blue streaks of cloud which hovered above the golden blaze of sunlight filling the horizon. Just past the cross street, at the road's end, where an unpaved but gated drive plunges down toward some mystery among the shadowy woods, I gazed out across the canyon. Beyond the treetops, the distant ridges were barely visible in the evening haze rising from the river. To the west, the trees broke the last bright rays of sunlight into golden shards.
Walking home, the fading streets were full of the smell of dinners cooking, and the boys had left their game. A few crows flew above, and the lines of cloud in the west turned lavender and pink, and then violet. In the east, the moon steadily brightened and began to cast faint shadows across the roads.
I wonder how many times I have done this, now? Hundreds, I should think. Yet, somehow, I have never grown tired of walking through the passage from day to night. It always leads to the same place. It always leads to calm.