The Magic Hour

They tell me, when you're shooting a movie, there's an hour or so before sunset when the light is crazy perfect: diffused yet bright; glowing everywhere. It's, you know, how they make Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron even bearable to look at for two hours.

Up here in Keillorsfauxburgville, folks who escape the big city for their lake cabins know there is an even more magic magic hour: magic-five-seconds-as-you-pull-into-the-boat-lift-right-around-sunset. When you go for a boat ride or come back home from fishin' at the right time, there's something that happens when all that light starts bouncing around off the boat and the water and the inside of the boat lift and coming through the translucent boat cover. It also helps that Pop-pop is retired now and has almost nothing to do except scrub his boat-lift canopy clean.

All of this is a long way of clarifying something: Miles is not as cute as he appears in this picture.