OCTOBER 24, 2025 – Life on earth is fleeting, and it has to be. If it were otherwise, ages ago life would’ve overwhelmed itself and its planetary host. Within this fleeting phenomenon we call “life” are fleeting moments—scenes, motions, encounters, conversations—that last but a flash. Like precious stones, these moments are special because they are rare.
Yet today I experienced such a bounty of these special fleeting moments, they filled a treasure chest of memories. The occasion was a long-anticipated visit by our younger son and his two-year-old son to assist with the annual chore of removing the “old dock”—one of three docks we must contend with at this time of year. (The other two are of modern design and manufacture and are removed by professionals.) For decades I’ve managed the job myself, but though I’m still up to the task, when I asked Byron in August if he’d be interested in flying out for a weekend this fall to help, he didn’t hesitate to respond in the affirmative. Perhaps his spontaneity was a sign he recognizes the inevitable—that his dad is getting older.
Whatever my need and Byron’s perception of it, arrangements were made. Beth and our just-turned-10 granddaughter Illiana, daughter of our other son, and I met Byron and Diogo at the airport a little after 9:00 p.m. yesterday and drove straight to the Red Cabin. We arrived at half past midnight under a breathtaking canopy of celestial light.
Illiana’s visits to the Red Cabin had been all too few this year, and I was eager for her, an urban dweller, to see from our modest orb the wonder of heavenly lights. By the time of our arrival, she was tired, sleepy, and ready to climb into bed. Initially, she resisted my effort to get her to look skyward, but when she finally did turn her gaze skyward, Illiana said aloud but to herself, “Oh! There are a lot of stars.”
If for only a moment she was awestruck—or was it because the moment was so brief?—her reaction to the stars was as I had so strongly desired. I’d wanted her to see and know first-hand, one of the most amazing sights an earthling can experience. Her verbal response to the scene above was one of those rare moments that gives a grandparent more delight than the grandchild can ever know—until she herself is a grandparent who says, “Just look at all those billions of stars up there!”
A second moment—or series of images—played out in the broad light of day, again outside. Our whole crew—Beth, Byron, Diogo, Illiana, and I hiked up to “Mt. Orray” to inspect the nearly completed Pergola-on-a-Platform. Iliana led the expedition, racing up the trail. Her little cousin, of that impressionable age that makes him do everything she does and in the style she applies, dashed behind her as fast as his little legs could carry him and shouted her name excitedly at the pursuit. At the “summit” the two climbed up and down the steps of the pergola platform, as the sun burned the chill out of the air.
I took photos, of course, of these ever so rare moments, but where the images are best preserved is in my memory—and in my heart, knowing that those two kids were themselves afforded precious moments together in a place traceable to their great-great-grandparents. Icing on the cake was the image of Byron introducing Diogo to a Norway pine (of many) along their later descent down the Ray-Way Trail, holding his son’s hand out to touch the boughs of the young tree and telling him that it was a “Norway pine.”
The third moment occurred this evening inside the Red Cabin. As bedtime approached for the little fella, Beth sat him down beside her on the living room sofa. She then invited Illiana to select some books from the extensive collection stored on the shelves of the bedroom that her father and Byron shared as young kids. As her two young grandchildren cuddled next to her, Beth read the Little Golden Book version of The Three Bears. The next thing I knew, Illiana was reading to her little admiring cousin as the Grandmama Bear looked on and listened. The fleeting moments on that sofa, I thought, stitched together with many others such as what I described above, are what perpetuate love and commitment, culture and civilization.
The special “fleeting moments” in our lives are to be savored as they flash in front of us, especially in unsettled times as now surround us.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
