Today I turned the calendar over, to the month of August and
in some ways it felt like the last dance. Summer in Crosslake is mostly
measured in three short months and August for many is the last hurrah. County
fairs, ripening crops and kids trying to pack all the fun they can, into the
last dog days of summer before they turn their attention back to school. Sometime
soon the leaves will loose their green luster, wilt around the edges and drop.
Those humming birds that drained my sugar canister this summer, will head south
once more where the flowers are still blooming. Morning sunsets will now come
later and evening sunsets earlier. The garden will be littered with rotting
vegetables that didn’t make the cut and the apple trees, burdened down with their
crop, will beg to be picked.
For me it will be remembered as the summer my loving friend
and I stood on a deck at McKinley Lodge in Alaska, like kids waiting for Santa
and waited patiently for the clouds to part, so we could see Denali. She knew
my love for that Mountain and wanted so badly for me to see it but it was also
the day when I realized in my heart that seeing the mountain would have been
nice, but being there with her was the most important thing to me. It was
another summer of reunions, pontoon rides, fishing and picnics. Concerts in the
park, sail boating on Lake Michigan and evenings that we just sat with a gin
& tonic and didn’t say anything because the evenings were made for just
absorbing the world around us and not spoiling it with chatter. There will be
time enough for that when the seasons done.
This will be remembered as the summer when I found out I
have great grandbabies on the way and the start of whole new generation. The
summer when friends I loved, went home to their just reward and left me with
another hole in my heart. The summer when six inches of rain flooded the lake
and strong winds took some of my oldest trees. The summer when Molly went nose
to nose with a skunk and somehow came out smelling like---well still smelling
like Molly, hallelujah. The summer when the kids next door came back to the
lake another inch taller and I finally realized what happened to all of my
grandkids. When some projects that needed doing, got done, and I found out that
my old body needs better care, more rest and easier projects.
It sadly is also the year when people found out they could
get some attention by killing other people and our politicians lost all of
their self-respect in a never-ending scrum for power. The year more glaciers
melted, the air got more polluted and the water too. The year our kids learned
less in school but cost more to educate. But this essay started out to be what
was right about this world and not what’s wrong with it, so let’s just end it
at that.
For seventy-five years August has rolled around but never
has it meant, what it means to me today. Maybe its because the coupon book of
my life has fewer August coupons then it had before and I’m finally realizing
it.
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