We took the long way around Ellis Pond, stopping to observe a kingfisher pair. Big dark heads, a call like a rattle and wings that opened smartly as scissors. We looked for the Great Blue Heron, but didn’t see him — or her — solitary dweller in the stream and weeds.

Long Pond was a lake, despite its name. It hung like a particularly wet piece of laundry on the line that was Moose River. The river fed the lake, and the lake, nine miles later, fed the river. Long Pond was a pause in the river’s flow — the river putting up its feet and taking a break.

Drivers, take care! A goose and her goslings have been observed crossing the Dayton–Yellow Springs Road near Antioch Midwest.

And that’s how childhood seems to me, a place more than a time. I still dream about certain things: the creek, the cherry tree in the backyard, the concrete front stoop that was a clean, if somewhat bumpy, slate for drawing.

My favorite glimpse was a blaze of forsythia growing up between two dark-clad Norway spruces. The spruces have always reminded me of a certain kind of minister or undertaker, while the yolky yellow interlude was like a kid’s laughter in a stern church.

It’s 90 fierce degrees outside, but summer is done. Labor Day arrives to wake us from the green dream.

We were peering into the universe — back through time, as my grandfather loved to tell me when I was a girl.