Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Promises, Promises





 
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My previous blog was full of excuses of why I hadn’t written lately. I believe it ended with a promise to do better. About that, it seems I am simply having too much time-consuming fun to actually document any of it. 




I hustled out of Texas at the end of May with the floodwaters at my back. I made my way to the cooler, drier, less humid (at the time) North.  Now it is mid-July and I have spent glorious weeks in northern Maine, hiking to mountain vistas with the family, playing at lakes with the grandchildren, kayaking out among the masses of arrow arum to catch whirligig beetles with my grandsons. 


By night the fireflies came out in masses around my daughters house, imitating fairies in such a convincing way.  I haven’t been around them in years and you just feel your age slip away.  In my mind, I am once again with Skippy jar in hand to make them my own little night light for awhile before I let them go. What simple but satisfying delights the outdoor world is replete with!  The glory of God is all around me and I simply can’t be thankful enough that any of this is happening. Now, where to begin documenting it?


I arrived on the Cape in June, the month I always said I would choose if I had only one month to live here.  Kids are still in school so the tourists haven’t come yet, however the horseshoe crabs are arriving by the hundreds to mate in the shallow salt creeks with the first full moon.  And yes, I know, the invasive, so I should hate it, but powerful-enough-to perfume-the-whole-peninsula, multi-flora rose is blooming EVERYWHERE! In the fields, by the ponds, climbing the trees as vines, making the woods look like a wedding bower.  I could smell the roses the moment I crossed the canal and it is only in June that that is true.


Everyone talks about the tang of salt air, and I think they maybe mean the tang of iodine from the seaweed drying on the high tide wrack.  Not every beach has that but there is an undeniable scent that tells you its summer, your home and no Yankee Candle has ever captured it completely.

All in all I was on the Cape seeing different friends, three separate times.  With any luck I might make it back one more time when I finally leave for home after Iceland.  And the flora and fauna will have altered again.  The marsh grass which takes till mid-June to even think about getting green (you would be slow to grow too if someone was dousing you with 50 degree water twice a day!) is now (In July) so green it is almost painful but by August will already be giving itself over to some subtle autumn hues, gold and rust start to mix with the green by mid-August.  I suppose I should be gone by then!


Well, this ended up being mostly about the Cape. Let us deal with Maine and my routine there in a subsequent blog and Rhode Island and Tuck and I getting in a walk along the marsh each morning from 5:30-6:30. 




He and I witness the morning bird commute and we have seen the osprey’s grow from two little heads barely over the rim of the nest to practically adult sized but, still begging, birds.  Those tales will wait for later.  Right now I need to pack for I leave for West Point tomorrow and Iceland on Saturday! What a gloriously spoiled person I am, but I am also one overwhelmingly grateful spoiled person! I hope your summer is laying down some treasured moments to call on later when winter is upon you.  Literally and metaphorically.


 
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