06.07.14  We arrived back home, at the start of this first week of June, to a beautiful warm summer’s day, and were happy to see the new dock’s still standing as the lake level rises.  Of course it is.  All concrete, designed by civil engineers, it should be able to withstand years of storms, but it’s become somewhat of a metaphor for us, as we’ve bounced along the waves of change, travel and family the past month or so.

I came home from dinner the other night and saw there was a fire in our forest!  Don, as well as the neighbor, and the landscape boys we’d hired to clear the woods while we were gone, all helped us with shovels and Pulaskis, and a bucket brigade.  I held a lantern on top my head to light the darkness.  It was nearly midnight when we walked out of the woods, the half-moon shining in the sky.  It’s been cool and plenty of rain showers, but one of their slash piles had burned down into the duff and traveled underground to a pile of cut logs.  We couldn’t stop talking about how fortunate we were to be back home for this misadventure.  Now, the house painters have started their two-week project and have piled porch furniture on the yard.  The kitties have lost their comfy cushions and look as jumpy and rattled as we are by all the disruption and commotion.

As we traveled across the state last week, passing the out-of-state license plates, the big recreational vehicles, and pick-up trucks pulling boats, it felt like summer had arrived.  The rivers are at flood stage, the trees are fully leafed out and it’s as green as the Irish countryside.  I always think, this time of year–with a touch of envy–what it must be like for the families headed to the lake and their summer homes.  Do they, like me, have equal parts excitement and trepidation of what they will find when they return?  What kind of damage might have happened over the winter; what little critters may have taken up residence in the vacant house; where are the holes on the pitch of the roof made by woodpeckers.  Once they arrive, there’s a bustle of energy, doing all the chores they must attend to, before they can relax into the comfort and familiarity of the sound of the water, the smells from the woods, the long afternoons and evenings, sitting on the dock.  It feels like summer, but the Summer Solstice is not until June 21st.  I must be diligent, and work to get the lake house ready for our lovely summer season, just like the returning summer people.  I must constantly remember to Be Here Now, in this moment, not the next one yet to come.