September 4. And we did indeed do it, our astronomical kayak stunt. At eight forty, when twilight was over and the moon would not rise for another hour. Moored the kayak to the shore with a one-hundred-feet hammock harness, got in using a headlamp and carefully paddled the hundred feet out onto the lake. Stars, though a few clouds on the eastern horizon, stars, though the trees on the shore still obscured half the sky. Summer triangle almost vertically above us, Saturn. The kayak so wobbly that we could hardly move. I had the image stabilizing binoculars with me, but even to lift them up to my face would have been too unstable. I just held up the smartphone to identify a few constellations, then we carefully paddled back to shore, where we had set up an insect trap as a beacon light so we’d find the spot.

Back home this morning. Two hours of carrying stuff up the one-hundred-yard footpath to the car. Showered in the more civilized part of the campground, on the other side of the lake. Exchanged the smoky clothes for fresh ones. Four and a half hours back to Newburgh.

The shower at the campground was still awful, compared to the shower at home. The water barely lukewarm, a dirty floor that you’d rather not touch with your feet, so you do a balancing act on your sneakers while drying off, etc. The hygiene technology in the 18th century seems horrible to us today, I would hardly have survived a day there, but that’s only because I know the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Is it possible that our time today will seem just as unbearable two hundred years from now?