A soft night

We recently spent an evening visiting with some friends on their farm. After dinner, the host suggested we take a walk down to the lake.
“It’s a soft night,” he said. “It’s not too cold, and the rain has stopped.”
We pulled on our jackets and, under the partially obscured half moon, set out, through the berries and past the corn maze, now retired for the season.
We topped a rise and stood overlooking the lake.
“My dad always wanted a lake,” our friend said. “A year ago, my mother said we should put one in. So we did.”
The kids — his and mine — scrambled up and down the hillside and traced the shoreline with their footsteps.
We continued our walk up another rise and stood in the quiet. Scattered across the countryside was a constellation of yard lights rivaling their celestial counterparts above.
We stood, and even the kids maintained a silence born of reverence for the moment.
It was quiet, as quiet as you will ever find.
After the walk, we got down to the serious business of the evening — charades.
“I’ll warn you — my wife is a professional. She’s played charades practically her whole life,” our host said.
So we split into teams, trying to come up with book and movie titles, sayings and characters that the youngest players could act out, while trying come up with others tough enough to stump the “professionals.”
Late into the night we played, enjoying the laughter, the jokes and the stories.
And I ached for a return to our small farm, which we left nine years ago when we moved west from Minnesota. It’s not that I live in New York City. The bustle of the small town I now live in is limited to a rush-15 minutes in the morning and evening as workers head to and from the smattering of factories and businesses that line the edge of town.
Yet there is something truly sacred about life in the country, away from the buzz of neighborhoods and apart from one another, except for family.
As we ended the last round of games and headed for the car for the short drive back to town, I turned to my wife agreed with our host.
It truly was a soft night.