E.B. White's "Once More To The Lake"

They don't get any better than this. The man's powers of observation are enormous, from the small waves chucking the rowboats under the chins, the eternal dragonfiles that land on the tips of the fishing poles, the road through the dusty summer field, the sagging net on the tennis court in the noonday heat, the shadows that "double the attendence" for a school of minnows in the lake shallows, the vertiginous feelings that sweep over White when he can't remember whether he's his father's son or his son's father, and eventually the reader's realization by the end that, in spite of early appearances, this is no nostelgic travel piece skipping and dancing down memory lane; it is rather a deeply moving evocation of loss, longing, aging and death.