Awww, gorsh...
Thank you all so much for pumping up my day. We are, in fact, headed for the Maine camp in the next few days. I have a pair of new oars waiting for me at the Springfield P.O. up there, and some new treasures to bring up with us (flashlights, fishing gear, and such...).
The water and the trees are always waiting. They have no jealousy, because they know we must come back, like a breath waiting to be drawn. The smell of balsam is everywhere there, checkerberry, soft beds of lichens and mosses, wild strawberries. Pine trees with trunks too large for two people's embrace. The moose who wade in a corner of the lake near us, the resident eagle, the wildly calling loons. The ducks who adopt us in return for thrown handfuls of multigrain Cheerios. The fish: the heavy-muscled, slab smallmouths, leaping chain pickerels, and bait-thieving sunfish and perch. At night, the stars spill out like thousands of jewels in a Spielberg sky.
My mother is flying in tomorrow to come with us to Maine. All my childhood years she took me to Massachusetts in the summer, to a cottage her father had built from old billboard lumber. No running water, no electricity: just pine trees and a pond.
The cabin is long gone there, but now she can see how much it meant to me, as she sees that I've reclaimed the heritage. Her father came from Maine. I came from the cottage. The circle completes.
We do have electricity and running water, though. Guess we can allow a flush toilet and sink into the pageant. After all, it's a new century.
It's an entrancing land, and my blood screams for it every day. I can't tell you how badly I want to make it to retirement age. So another notch isnt all that bad, though I still wouldn't wish any of it away.
Thank you all again for your kind thoughts.
Very best wishes,
