Our great challenge is to slow down this sprint through summer, to savor this fleeting season's sweetness and try to make it last.

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in," wrote Thoreau. "I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains."

Island summer, in its very evanescence, is a glimpse of eternit.y