Summer afternoons

The midsummer sun, high in the north, shines warmth onto lake and forest from the early morning to the last gleams of its setting.  It's time to bask in the sun like a cat, absorbing its delightful heat, then take a dip in the crystal clear waters of the lake.  No one's around who's not your known friend, and if someone is who cares? Give them a wave and a smile.

Winter was so miserable and so long, I thought it would never end.  But these days it's but a fading memory, best not brought to mind. Now it is high summer, mid-June, the best time of the year to my mind. No bitter north winds of winter, no gales, no blizzards, no 20 degrees below zero days, no stuck inside the house doing whatever you can to avoid cabin fever, no spring mud, slush and damp shadows.  Now is the time of gentle zephyrs, brilliant sunshine, barn swallows, song sparrows, blue jays, finches, thrushes and wrens, all singing and soaring, wood doves cooing, and far above gliding hawks uttering the occasional long kreee and vultures even higher, circling, silent.  And roses, roses, roses, as well as every other wild flower you can think of.

As the summer, comes on and lingers and I spend more and more time out of doors, my hair grows lighter and my skin darker.  But I douse myself with SPF One Billion sun block anyway. And as each day passes, and each hour of each day, I wear less and less clothing. Do the deer and antelope wear clothes?  Does the elk?  Then why should I?

 The yard apes and my mini-me clone, holy terrors one and all, skinny dip in exuberant innocence and freedom while, without seeming to, I keep a close eye on them, as do the dogs -- better guardians and life guards you could not find.  The little squirts' whoops and hollers and watch this's and no fairs! and my turns! echo and tumble across the water to be lost in the trees. I want them to have a happy childhood, one they will always remember with fondness, a time of their lives they can treasure no matter what may befall them as adults. As long as they live, as long as this earth exists, this particular summer will never come again.  They will never be this young again.  All life belongs to them during these long summer days in a way it never will in times to come, if come it does.   No one can steal or abuse your memories. I want their memories from the time I was able to help create them to be ones they will always return to with warmth and pleasure.

I have important things I want to write about -- important to me anyway -- but at this time of year, in this weather, who cares?  I am immersed in the eternal now and nothing else matters.  I am merely and happily just another animal luxuriating in being alive. And the kids are like the fawns born mere weeks ago who dash around in gleeful exuberance, with no thought of the coyote, bear, mountain lion, speeding car and trophy hunter waiting in their future.  The past is gone, and perhaps never really was; maybe it was just a dream. And the future, if there is such a thing, does not exist and may never exist.  But there is now. Now is forever.