In the morning David watched the ducks flitter across the lake or rest and prune feathers on the branches of the fallen willow tree.
Most of the year there were mallards and the occasional blue heron.
In migration months merganzers came.
One coronmont showed very occasionally.
In the air above the lake waters an eagle might flap by.
And he watched woodpeckers, chickadee, nuthatch, goldfinch visit the feeder.
It was always quiet in the morning. In warm months the motors would shatter that, but not until ten AM.
It was good to sip hazelnut coffee in the lounge and just watch ducks.
When he had been a younger man, he would go out before the mist lifted and fish bluegills from the rowboat. At 75 he could only manage the pontoon boat and generally chose the afternoon.
On summer Saturdays and Sundays he would leave in late morning and drive to shop or perhaps to see "Group of Musicians" at the Clark Museum in Williamstown. He did not want to be on the lake for the parades of boats and the blasphemy of jet skiis.
At some point he'd make the same breakfast: two eggs over easy with some leftover meat on the side or with crisp pork belly, as good as bacon but without the salt and nitrates. And perhaps a small slice of toasted bread to soak up the running yolk.
Or he might grab a fresh and flopping bluegill out of the live well and clean it, dip it in flour, fry it in oil.
It was a peaceful, easy life.
In the past he would have added in some radio news, but he'd stopped that. He knew he was not going to actually do anything about anything, so why be upset.
Picket lines or letter writing campaigns were just impractical for an aged body, for a man with just one functional eye. If people were not going to actually take action, the news was all needless worry. Once "All Things Considered" has broadened what was reported, but that do had dwindled to just politics, an endless talking and speculating and postulating and rarely any real result.
He'd rather study the birds and wonder what they were thinking. He'd rather be lulled by wind and water. He'd rather read a poem.
He did not mind being alone, but it was not so fine as when Susan had been alive. He could talk to her every morning, but now she would never talk to him again, and so it was a rather useless, one sided conversation. Still, he did it.
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