A recent posting by our colleague Mr. Pudding-Blues sent the editorial collective here at texts&pretexts into a state of (collective) reverie. As we sat in silence around the boardroom table (rosewood, walnut insets, brass fittings, a full set of our inscribed initials) the embers of our cigars glowed like fireflies on amphetamines while our thoughts drifted back over the barren decades. Surprisingly, we found that all on the board shared one common memory of fire (and undoubtedly it is this kind of weird synchronicity which drew the disparate, disreputable lot of us together years ago…)

We were remembering our antique summers: when all of us were younger, and our younger siblings were younger still. Even our parents were younger then, we seemed to think, more carefree perhaps, more nimble on their (younger) feet. Summers were spent then en famille, of course, in an ancient wood-frame cabin without amenities, on an island in the southern Georgia Strait. And of course those August days were sunnier, and August itself went on without apparent end. And when it did end there was nothing more traumatic at the ending than another year of school, with another August on the farther side…

And on those August evenings…

With the dinner done, and the dishes washed and towel-dried, the dish-pan of warm and soapy water would be carried reverently to the back-porch rail. And you would rest it there a moment on the railing while you caught your breath. The stars would be strewn munificently, beneficently, across the sky above you, and you would be blessed by them: you would feel blessed.

And then you’d lift the dish-pan again, and with an effort you would swing it out from the railing, turning, and tilting it, the water spinning in a liquid fringe of silver — a halo — that caught the moonlight as it fell. Water coating the maple leaves below you with a silver film.

Later you would leave the cabin one by one: your young parents, your younger siblings and yourself — and gather in the darkness on the sun-bleached grass which separated your cabin from the others. And before those cabins other families would be gathering as well: all of you exultant to be outside together, fellow citizens of the nocturnal nation that is a summer’s night.

There would be a slow parade of this summer citizenry: a gradual progression from the cabins towards the beach. Past the brambles heaped in their tangled darkness alongside the path, with a sweet perfume of berries suspended in the air; past the wood-pile where you split fir and arbutus for the kitchen woodstove fire. Past the big, white clapboard house with its windows shining yellow-orange. And old Mr. or Mrs. Forbes might be standing there in silhouette before the window-light, might wave to you as you passed, might call out a greeting to you all, might laugh.

On the sandstone point beside the shingle beach: that smorgasbord of stars spread across a sudden sky; a silhouette of mountains cut from the horizon; remains of sunset stain a blue-black hem. Someone would have gathered driftwood from the tideline, would have built a fire; logs casually arranged in semi-circle around the flames.

For this is how those summers always ended: the final evening, a last campfire. The fireboat flotilla in mid-assembly: three weeks of waxed-cardboard milk cartons slit and stuffed with crumpled paper; a fleet of Viking pyres awaiting the invocation of a match.

Did you you feel a reverence as you knelt at waterside beside them? Did you sense something sacred when you set the boats on fire? What were you thinking as you looked forward down that ragged silver path across the sea? Somewhere there was a city, somewhere a school, somewhere a job.

It comes to this.

Tomorrow everything will be packed away: the library books, the faded clothes. The day itself. The cabins will be swept spotless, the windows swung wide, wind blowing through. Fathers will struggle to strap straining luggage on roof-racks, stuff suitcases into trunks of cars until the springs complain. Rear bumpers will scrape ferry on-ramps as these overloaded cars roll aboard for their journeys home.

What use to protest against the future’s fatal pull? Fireboats borne away forever on an ebbing tide. You cannot stay behind; nor can you go back, ever. At most you’ll be granted brief reprieve: to stand once more by that not-forgotten tideline; to feel yesterday’s damp sandstone’s rasp against your young, bare feet.

Close your eyes. Listen: the soft lap lapping of that black salt-water. Look: a glimpse of distant fireboats. Watch while their faint flames flick out one by one by one.

The sea in remembered darkness once again.