The squirrels chased each other around the trunk of the tree. Brown leaves lay in piles in the yard. At the pond beyond the treeline that becomes visible each year when most of the branches are bare, a flock of geese all at once stand on the bank, bound toward the water on their flipper-ended, spindly black legs, take flight, and glide to various points on the surface of the pond where they each alight for a splash landing.