It was one of those late Indian summer days in early November and I was in my canoe, the one that cannot sink, on Forest Lake near the Canadian border waiting for some ducks to come in. It was a Thoreau kind of day, silent and still, except where springs were pushing bubbles up from down below. Most of me is covered in my dog’s brown back seat blanket. In my lap I am holding the brochure from the Vermont fish and game department, which lists which ducks and how many can be shot per day.

But I’m not interested in a golden eye, green or blue teal or even a wood duck, but only for a mallard or two, for me the best tasting of fresh water ducks. I have put out a few mallard-like decoys and then I wait and wait and wait.

I begin to wonder if Beckett ever went duck hunting. It becomes so still that I am on the verge of napping when I hear slop, slop, slop. slop. I do not move but the short waves move my canoe just enough so that I can see a cow moose standing about 30 yards away and giving me a questionable look. I try to remember if it is wise to make eye contact with a moose or not. After several minutes of mutual staring, she seemed to relax and began munching on a blend of pondweed and lily pads, and remnants of both began sticking out from both sides of her mouth while water dribbled down her massive nose like an old fashioned outdoor water pump.

After about 20 minutes she left, her shades of brown blending into the surrounding forest. And I reflect for a moment that the moose and ducks that I’m waiting for can both move at 35 miles per hour.

Many years later I would spend my first winter on Chilmark Pond. There I cut wood nearly every day and used the outdoor pump for water. From time to time I would have trout for dinner. There were many creatures in my vicinity. Deer would routinely swim across the pond where otters would frolic while foraging for food. Once, in the middle of a snow storm, a flock of snow buntings arrived, played in the swirls of snow like children and were gone the next morning. There were occasional sightings of muskrat and a very large snapping turtle.

But the group I remember best were the companions that shared the space with me around the cabin: a horse, a pony and a donkey. They would greet me each day looking in through the large picture window and wait patiently for me to arise and with apples give them their morning treat. I always fed the donkey first. Although the smallest, he had an edge at times and so to keep him from honking and braying and kicking out in all directions in leaps that would have impressed Nureyev I fed him first. The large and regal horse came next, and finally the mellow and patient pony.

One night, a night without any discernible light, I returned late and then remembered that I had left my flashlight in the cabin and that I had also forgotten to stop at Cronig’s for damaged apples. I soon realized that, like an owl, I needed hints from two sources and I started with my feet to shuffle about and locate a worn path that led to the cabin while keeping my ears focused on the sound of crashing waves from the left side of the large hill which borders the pond. Suddenly, from out of the darkness I felt and then heard a rumble as 12 hooves headed in my direction.

I could see nothing. Just before the loudest and first arrived I leaped to the left and the horse slid by, stopped and returned to sniff me for the goods I didn’t have. The others, soon satisfied that no one had been secretly fed, joined me and then we headed procession-like down the hill to the cabin.

John Crelan lives in Oak Bluffs.