Fragments From Floyd

There won't be many more mild evenings when we can take our meals out back and sit in the white plastic chairs in the curve of the driveway behind the house. It's a little more private there than on the front porch, where, should a vehicle pass at dinner time, we feel compelled to stop our conversation, balance our plates on our laps so at least one hand will be free to wave should anyone look up our way. Behind the house, we eat in anonymity and with a loftier perch and better view of the evening sky.

But last night, we both remarked how much worse the gnats had become in the past few days. There had been one of those mass hatchings we've come to expect this time of year when the dew-wet metal roof will literally be covered, hundreds to the square inch, with black gnats til the next rain comes to wash them away. We wear our wide-brimmed straw hats to try to discourage those that invade our eyes and ears, and I splash on a little repellent if I'll be out working for any time. They are sure a nuisance, but at least they don't carry diseases like the mosquitoes we both grew up with in Alabama and Mississippi.

It wasn't long into our meal before we noticed scores of nighthawks coursing like arrows over the house, back and forth in sweeping circles. Odd. That's the first time we've seen them in this kind of numbers, and especially flying so close. Usually, they form the highest circle in the spheres of crepuscular feeders--dragonflies, bats, chimney swifts--in the column of space over Goose Creek.

But of course, I finally understood: the nighthawks have come because the gnats have come. For them, the hatching is a feast. Dinner is served. Please eat long and well, insectivorous friends.

And soon, both flying dinner and diner will be gone with the coming of cold weather. We'll take our meals indoors and the white chairs will be stacked over in the barn until May. It is a rhythm we know well now, and even the gnats are a part of the dance.