Happy Birthday to Me!

"You say it's your birthday?" You can sing the rest. And all I want is for Bella to poop. I already got my period so that tiny question mark has been laid to rest after battling some kind of nauseous stomach thing for 3 or 4 days now that reminded me of, well, pregnancy. Other things I am not getting besides a 48-year-old immaculate conception since Andy's parts were snipped after Bella was born and I hung a giant CLOSED FOR BUSINESS sign on my uterus? Well, the swine flu, I hope, a boob job, a tummy tuck, or any other kind of narcissistic surgery - I'll save that for my 50th, a warm and sunny walk on Playa Conchal, a trip to DC to visit Hannah since she is in Rio, a trip to Brazil to visit Hannah, anything smacking of rampant consumerism, or a trip to Hawaii so I am posting this photo from our aquarium trip the other day instead. It is the Picasso Triggerfish, aka the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a, the Hawaiian State Fish and I love that fact. Or a move into our yurts. Yes, my third move-in deadline is here and will not be met either. Instead, the carpenter called this morning and is checking himself into rehab. Surprise! Happy Birthday to me!

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Yesterday I went on Isaiah's fourth grade field trip. They are studying Oregon history, timely for us, and we went to two museums in Newport where I learned that Newport, OR, the next town to where Andy grew up in Waldport, was actually named after Newport, RI, the next town to where I grew up in Middletown! Ha! An apparently little known fact that even Andy never learned. It appears that one, Sam Case, hailing from Mom's great state of Maine, came west to seek his fortune and stopped when the land ran out on the Oregon coast where he conceded, founding Newport in 1868. Here he built the Ocean House, also named for a hotel in Newport, RI, which used to be the center of social activity and remains the same, of sorts, as now it is the Stop and Shop plaza. But back here in Newport on the left coast, I figure Sam Case was the first to arrive here from Newport on the right coast. And about 150 years later, I am probably the second.

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After lunch we danced at our first Pow Wow! Wow! Such a fun word. Pow Wow! Sorry the photo stinks. The Confederated Tribes of the Siletz are celebrating their reinstatement of tribalhood in 1977 which they lost for 20 years or so after apparently selling off most of their original 1.4 million acres which includes the land I am sitting on right now typing. Even though it is a mixed ragtag bunch of folks in appearance, I nearly wept at the beauty of the tiniest girls dressed in their regalia and dancing on their tip-toed mocassins with their hands placed proudly on their hips and moving with the graceful elegance of their genetic heritage. They, too, might morph into the caffeine-in-a-can-carrying teens who shuffled along behind them, unsure of their place in the world, but for now their enthusiasm remains the colorful and hopeful link between past and present. "Listen," the leader commanded us with the words of his Grandfather, "or your tongues will make you stupid."

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These are the reminders that you are back in the west. Christiana recently played the Chemawa Lady Braves in volleyball. The Siletz team, incidentally, are the Warriors. These folks aren't afraid of racial stereotyping. The Chemawa Indian School is the oldest operating school of its kind, from 1880, and used to be one of those horrid places where they forced reservation kids to board, speak English, and forget about being Braves and Warriors. Their team roster proudly lists what tribes the players are from and these gals hailed from more than a dozen tribes including the Navajo, Apache, Cherokee, Pueblo and Karuk. I sat in the stands and secretly cheered them on with historic guilt, admiring the variety of their ethnic beauty. Last year in Costa Rica Isaiah studied Native Americans and did a report on the Apache. Now this year he and Christiana are playing with them.

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We left the Pow Wow in better shape than my ancestors on the Mayflower afforded their native friends. We were welcomed openly, treated with respect, educated in their ways, invited to dance, and cheered by the crowd on our departure. My ancestors invited their native friends to dinner on the first Thanksgiving. Then they killed them and stole their land. As I sit here on former reservation lands, I am sure hoping the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz have not taken any lessons in history from us.

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Happy Birthday to me!

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K3

Yurts, yurts, everywhere...

Okay, yurt fans, here is the long-awaited sequel to the first, cliffhanging episode of Yurt Building 101. When last we left off, the yurts were basically a supporting structure with nothing to protect us from the elements. Now, they are finished! Well, almost. To recap, we managed to get the smaller yurt closed in before the rain fell. Here is how the structure of them looked before all the supports you can see lying on the floor were screwed into place and the covering process began.
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Working from the hole in the top, the interior roof liner is unfolded and worked around the top.

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Then the space blanket of astronaut-friendly insulation is unfolded on top of that and super heavy top cover is hefted up thru the hole and carefully unfolded as well.

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The interior insulated walls are hung from the interior support cable and the outside walls hung from an extra flap on the exterior roof. It's kind of like hanging a giant, heavy shower curtain. The skylight dome is carefully fed up to the center and put into place. The whole thing is cinched and tightened. And cinched and tightened. And cinched and tightened. And screwed into place. Tightly. Nobody wants a baggy, wrinkly yurt, after all.

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And here's how it looked before the rain began.

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And it did rain. And the larger yurt did get wet. And the water did pool on top and drip thru the floor boards into the insulation, which also dripped, and it was not a pretty sight. BUT. The sun came out and dried up the landy, landy and everything was fine and dandy, dandy. And we managed to get that one enclosed before the next rains fell and now I think we are out of the danger zone. Today we are supposed to get 6 inches of rain so that should be a good test.

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Now we are building the mudroom/bathroom in between.

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We had high winds a few nights ago and I lay awake listening to the howling gusts and imagining all that work flying around up there with my mother-in-law's words in my head, "It can get pretty windy up here you know," but am happy to report that in the morning they were intact and they were like, "What?" when we showed up all concerned and everything. Bella finally found a wall she can color on without getting in trouble.

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And here's a view of our dining/living room view. Lovely!

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K3

You will know us by our layers

Columbus Day has come and gone and, as usual, I wondered, "Okay, what would Columbus do?" Especially if his kids were home from school on a 4-day weekend. There being no edge of the world to sail off and certainly no hope of discovering a new nation complete with old inhabitants, I, like most Americans, celebrated with the closest approximation available to us - I gathered my kin and sailed up the coast of Oregon to Lincoln City to the Tanger Outlet Mall. I think Columbus would have approved, not being much of a stay-at-home-and-watch-the-Red-Sox-lose kind of guy. He would definitely have sought an adventure of this kind, I am sure of it.
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While on our voyage, we slowed down in Depoe Bay long enough to annoy the traffic behind us until we spotted a whale spouting just off the surf, both of which seemed something else Columbus might have done. Whales aside, just imagine the tailgating and bird flipping that went on back in the glory days of the high seas.
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Once safely in port, I beat out my fellow celebrants for a prime docking space. No mooring buoy for us. I located my AAA card and got a free coupon booklet for fabulous discounts at each store which drew us lemming-like through its doors with the promise of giant Columbus Day markdowns, just as the old salt himself probably would have done. I think Columbus was your early day bargain shopper, after all, judging by the continent he scored. And my AAA card is gold, something he shopped around the world for. The only thing I perhaps did not do as well as Chris, himself, was spread pestilence and disease, but the verdict is still out I suppose. Another 24 hours should tell.
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So, why were we outlet shopping when earlier this year I lamented this all-American pasttime as a terrible waste of time and money right here on this blog, all but proclaiming it the harbinger of all things wrong with our society, albeit from the relative soapbox safety zone of my tropical paridise? Oh yeah, good point. But the answer is - layers. Layers, my girl, layers. Lots of them. As in name this movie: "You're so wrapped in your layers, onion boy." It is only mid-fall, I know, but already we are piling them on and we need more. Today I have on boots that seem stylish at first glance but are rated to 40 below, a good Canadian brand and those Kanuks know how to be stylish and warm. I have on thick tights and a dress and a belted sweater dress, don't tell Christiana, and a scarf and all this just to putter around the house and type away at my keyboard. I am in search of fingerless gloves. And when I dare to venture outside I will really have to get serious.
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Okay, so the temperature is still in the 50's. And I am still surrounded by central heating. I am worried. One year of all that wonderful tropical blood thinner and we are all freezing, all the time. I am looking at deer and elk in a whole new way. I don't want to eat them; I want to wear them. Last week we almost hit a huge elk in the road. He bounded up off of the road, revealing the yellow road sign that he had been blocking with his bulk. Elk Crossing, it said. Well alright then. At least he was in the right place and it would have made us look rather, well, illiterate had we crushed our car on his broad side. "Well, officer, we were just approaching the Elk Crossing sign when we came upon this big bull, er, um, elk..." I was busy imagining how many mukluks I could get out of that gorgeous pelt.
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Melanie wrote today and invited us to move to Dubai. I googled UAE quickly, even tho I admit that I was a geography major. Anyway, it was probably called something else back in those days. It's one of those fields of study you have to keep up with. Now, as a swimmer, deserts don't really interest me. They make me thirsty just thinking about them. But immediately I noticed it is a coastal country. I am not even sure what sea it lies on but Iran is a short sail away. Perfect! One of my top ten vacation destinations. I will pack Lolita and visit Tehran. The truth is, I fear the cold more than I fear terrorism. (And now I wonder how many Homeland Security types are about to read this blog because I used that last word.) Oh well, maybe they will offer me a job in a warm climate.
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Thanks, CC, for the great holiday. What was your middle name, anyway? Sure, we all struggled to get out of bed this dark and rainy morning, but honoring you with all that shopping was worth it. My AmEx card thanks you as well. My husband? Probably not so much. I can hardly wait to honor the pilgrims, my own ancestors, with even more blessed bargain shopping. We give thanks that here, in our beloved country, there is no end to the money you can save by honoring our past and simply spending.
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Amen.
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K3

So, What Exactly is a Yurt?

Okay, alternative dwellings fans, listen up. Your mongolian housing education course for the day is here, in case we have not already answered this question in person. All you ever wanted to know about yurts and more, coming right at you. So, what is a yurt? No, it is not yet another clever word invented by Dr. Seuss - remember Yurtle the Turtle, the king of the pond? Well, you should. Yertle wanted to reach higher than the moon so made all his fellow turtles stack on top of each other to raise him higher and higher until one of them burped, once considered a vulgar word for a children's book, landing Yertle in the mud where, you might conclude, he belonged. But I digress.

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According to the dictionary, a yurt is "a circular, domed, portable tent used by the nomadic peoples of central Asia." Think Mongolian yak herders... In our case this might read more accurately, "a circular, domed, tent made with high tech insulated astronaut-friendly fabric resting on a wooden platform with a lovely pine floor and technically considered "portable" but I would sure hate to move the darn thing(s), yak backs or no. But don't worry PETA supporters, no yaks have been harmed in the process.

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And why are we living in Oregon for a year? Well, because we rented our house in RI out for 2 years to a proper British naval officer and his family and spent only one of those years in Costa Rica before coming up with this brilliant next adventure. Three weeks ago we sat down with said proper British naval officer and he assured us all was in order in proper British naval officer fashion. So we loaded up all our belongings and sailed across the USA in a manner unlike my Mayflower ancestors but with perhaps some of the same ideology and motivation. Two weeks ago we arrived at our destination here on the left coast and unloaded our precious possessions, got the kids settled into their new schools, and continued pounding nails and generally getting our yurts to rise up in order. One week ago we received an e-mail from our proper British naval officer's housing and relocation department notifiying us that said officer and his family have been relocated back to England and effectively giving us 30-days notice of their impending departure as per their "military clause", a standard cursed feature of any military rental agreement. Did you hear that primal scream?

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Okay, so I digress, but if you know anyone in need of a lovely home in Portsmouth, RI to rent or buy please don't hesitate to holler! Meanwhile, back at the yurts... So, because there are five of us and we like a little bit of stretching space, we are actually building two yurts. Why not. And with a regular old rectangular-shaped building in between which will serve as the mudroom and official entrance to our little yurtdom. Yes, we are expecting a bit of mud. This is a photo of the larger of the two yurts so you get an idea of the structural framework.

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Next the floor is insulated and a lovely pine flooring nailed on and the whole thing cut into a circle to fit the yurt itself.

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Last Wednesday we took a field trip to Pacific Yurts in Cottage Grove where we could walk around in a yurt for the first time and get a feel for our new concept of home, sweet home and start to envision where the furniture might go. We drove thru the equivalent of New England on our trip around one small section of this vast State through the land of magical words like Umpqua, Siuslaw and Siletz. Or Alpine. Or Drain. They loaded up the neat packages containing our new home on Andy's white truck - and here I could add that this is also the land of the white trucks. Trucks, in general, are abundant but there must have been an oversupply of white paint in Michigan in the past decade or maybe it's just like anything on your mind like when you want a baby you can't move without tripping over one. And even though I swore I would never live in a home that came on wheels, I am granting this one exception.

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So, by now you might have guessed that there is some assembly required. And soon you will be scratching your head wondering how the average Joe manages to erect one of these things. To begin, you put on a ring of insulation to prevent those nasty floor drafts and attach a ring of hardi-plank cement siding. Then you unfold the exterior like a baby gate and attach it.

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Now if it rains or floods inside you will effectively have a nice barrier which prevents the water from escaping, leaving you with a water feature. So you start to feel the urgency. Next comes the most dangerous part - inserting the roof rafters between the ring in the center and the high tension cable that runs around the top of the lattice. This is when Randy, one of your helpers, will stand on a 10 foot scaffold and regale you with the amazing story of how he fell 120 feet when a building he was working on was hit by a crane and collapsed around him. Three hours later they dug him out, finding him miraculously alive but quite broken. He was in a drug-induced coma for 3 months and 30 surgeries and so many pounds of titanium later here he is scampering around overhead declaring, "But I love heights!"

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Yesterday Christiana and I drilled and screwed four metal plates to the ends of 81 (That's 81x4x2 holes each!) vertical supports and attached them to the floor and rafters and sides, effectively screwing the whole thing together so the yurt does not collapse in case of snow or excessive rain or high winds!

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Today, with any luck, we will get the ceiling and walls and skylight dome on before the rains fall and the swimming pool forms. Pray for us, please, and look for the next cliff hanging edition of Yurts are Us...

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K3

From Left to Right and Right to Left and Back Again

Okay, I guess it is only fair to warn you. This is a long blog detailing a long trip. But hey, it's been awhile since last I wrote and it is a big country. If you can, hum the tune, "This Land is Your Land", while you read along. It's probably been awhile... AND, there are pictures! I finally figured out how to add them to the body of the text!! Progress is being made daily. Grab a bowl of coffee and read on.

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Twenty one years ago this October 8 will mark the first time Andy and I drove across this vast nation we live in these days. The words, "I do," were still fresh on our lips as we had recently spoke them with great sincerity in front of a small crowd of family and friends in the Wayne Community Church and then danced until our shoes wore out on a snowy night in Maine during the peak of the foliage season. We had loaded up all our new possessions, which fit nicely in the back of a 2-door Honda Civic hatchback I purchased from my brother Brian using my readjustment allowance from the Peace Corps where Andy and I met and fell in love in the tropical warmth of Jamaica where everything seems like a good idea. But lest you think we had heatstroke and made the wrong decision, and you might not be the first, let me assure you that we heeded the extolled PC advice and returned home on the range to make sure it was the real thing before running off down the aisle with no looking back. Then off we drove, 3000 miles, for the first time to settle into our first home in the hills of San Francisco and our first jobs and soon welcomed our first baby, Hannah.

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Fast forward 11 years to 1999 when we loaded up two huge U-Hauls with our expanded collection of possessions once again, each with a car on a trailer in tow. We caved in and bought a game boy to entertain our three kids - Hannah plus two of our four Beaver State babies, Christiana and Micah. The kids traded off vans and mine held Micah's two spotted newts - Sir Isaac and Fig - and an assortment of plants I couldn't bear to leave behind like my single peony and we headed back from the left coast to the right. This time we were leaving Andy's home state where we had settled after being all shook up by the SF earthquakes. I was pregnant with Isaiah and we were leaving the remains of Noah and Jonah in a cemetery on a sunny hill in Salem where two sweetgum trees and a granite seat marked their spot. The sight of Mt. Hood retreating in my rearview mirrow allowed me to take a full breath and exhale a huge sigh of relief as I headed my family home to the Atlantic to heal.

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Fast forward another decade and there we were, last week and the week before, doing it all again in reverse. This time we had successfully whittled our "needs" down to one moving van, a Penske this time having learned from our "What maintenance?" U-Haul experience the time before. Andy had already driven one car across in July and I followed him across country like a good wife in my van with two bikes on the back and two different kids this time - our RI babies, Isaiah and Bella. (We left Micah behind, boo hoo, and Xana took the quick way, flying out to meet us in Portland.) Following that big yellow truck made for a quick game of "Banana", if you know what I mean... We figured they could switch off vehicles now and again but the DVD player and leather captain's chairs proved too much to resist. Technology has changed alot in a decade and the game boy lost its allure, replaced by a DS and an MP3 player which barely got used due to the DVD's and Polly Pockets.

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We headed up thru MA and back down thru RI and across CT and over the Hudson on the Tappan Zee bridge from NY to NJ, both of which have a no-cell-phone law while driving. We chatted freely after crossing the PA border and spent the first nite near U Penn. PA, by the way, has the best rest areas with great food choices. I can tell you right now that we saw a good many rest areas en route thanks to the "pinenut" bladders of Isaiah and Bella, who spent the trip filling them up as fast as we emptied them. "I'm thirsty," was quickly followed by, "I have to go potty." I figure they rode 3000 miles across this fair land but will mostly remember Middle Earth as they watched the extended play Lord of the Rings trilogy with perhaps some scenes from Rugrats in Paris mixed up in their memories of our trip across the nation.

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Skipping across OH and IN - not much to see besides barns and no wonder Michael Jackson left the armpit known as Gary - I have said this before, but seeing all the wind turbines spinning happily over the verdant waves of corn and soy in our nation's heartland - IL and IO - warmed my heart. But really, must they do all the work? And speaking of putting people back to work, I should add here that our nation's highways are under construction - all of them. We spent a night at Andy's cousin's farm and learned a bit about the farming-thousands-of-acres life before heading on to cross the mighty Mississippi River and eating lunch at ACOE dam #12 - voted the most scenic Subway in the nation in our very professional scientific study. There we sat in the sun and watched the heaping piles of coal on flat barges traversing the locks in Bellevue while chatting with the city manager. Iowa looks small on the map but it is not. I was elated by the "Welcome to Minnesota" sign and picked up the national public radio station broadcasting live from the MN State Fair. Perfect.

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We crossed over the mighty Missouri River on the Lewis and Clark trail, a great visitor's center where a gal walked her horse in the "pet walking" area and they had a "beware of poisonous snakes" sign on the scenic overlook trail. I figure they should post one of those at the airports in Costa Rica and that would pretty much cover them for the entire country where, by the way, we never saw such a warning in spite of the plethora of said creatures!

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Okay, here is where things slow down so read more slowly. One word - South Dakota (!) Guess we should have known we were in for some long miles ahead when they offered a 4 CD set at the first visitor's center on all kinds of fascinating and not-so-fascinating details to get you across their state without killing yourself from sheer boredom. Guns for Jesus should be their motto judging by the billboards and thank God we had those to read! I used to think it was terrible that the white man hung out of train windows and shot at the buffalo passing thru this vast expanse but now I understand their desperation completely. I was ready but we never saw even one buffalo in 3000 miles. Ask me anything about SD. They have a state dinosaur, the triceratops, and I really wished I would see one running at us thru the miles of sunflower farms which seemed so lovely at first... As an aside, many states have state dinosaurs. RI does not. But one of my wonderful uncle's lasting legislative achievements as a State Senator from our neighbor, CT, was to get them one - the theropod - never heard of it but there you have it.

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So it is really called the Mt. Rushmore State and that is as it should be since that awe-inspiring monumental achievement made every long and boring hundreds of miles across SD worth the trip. Dream big! It is an amazing achievement and you should make a point of seeing it before you die. Bella had a bloody nose there and bled on the stone, a family tradition as my Dad recently bled on the Blarney Stone, and we renamed it Mt. Gushmore.

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We had to seek shelter from an awesome hail storm as we hiked the presidential path and in the walkway of flags RI was touching OR, how poignant...

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Safe to say we were the only RI plates in the multi-tiered parking garage and we made the kid's day who was working his summer away taking money at the park entrance and asking folks, "Where you from?" That's what he said after he said, "No," when we said RI and asked for a discount for distance traveled - "But you just made my day!"

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When you do go to Rushmore, enter thru Wyoming. Here the deer and the antelope really do play and the landscape is varied and interesting with the Rocky's looming in the western sky. Black oil rigs pump away in folks' backyards like prehistoric critters themselves and their owners smile all the way to the bank. Wyoming is a state where you can really STREEETTTCCCHHH out and you can do whatever you want in your own backyard and nobody else will know. This is the state I was traversing as NPR reported on that poor gal who had been found imprisoned in that creepy CA backyard all these years later but looking around WY one can easily see how that could happen.

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Entering into MT the sky really does seem to get bigger. Courtesy of the pinenut bladder twins, we happened to stop at the site of Custer's last stand, the Battle of Little Big Horn. There we listened to a very engaging park ranger recount the entire day as well as a good bit of the history of those times. We should have stayed for hours but it was only supposed to be a pit stop... I sure felt sorry (read that with a western twang...) for how we treated Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and so many other proud and wise men of their time who fought so hard and unsuccessfully to live in peace. NPR chose this very moment to do a Pete Seeger show and I drove while singing along to folk music inspired by the landscape around me, including songs from his days with Woody Guthrie. We sang "This Land is Your Land" while we traveled thru Bozeman and crossed over the continental divide to Butte, home of the largest scary still-filling superfund lake site in the land, and on into Missoula where Steve and Heidi of the Christiana posse put us up for the night. We talked and dreamed of Jamaica with jerk chicken and Red Stripe in our bellies.

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We climbed thru the serious mountain passes all in the next day with gorgeous views of Lake Couer D'Alene as we crossed the skinny part of Idaho's panhandle. In WA the weather was wild and I ran over a good number of quintessential tumbleweeds in the road as we approached and entered into threatening dust and lightening storms under black skies. "I hope there aren't any tornadoes," Andy remarked casually, scaring me to death. It was blowing like crazy in the windy Columbia Gorge where hundreds of wind turbines lined the river, a new feature since our last trip thru. The wind and kite surfers criss-crossed the river with their splotches of fast-moving color and we pulled into Hood River in time for dinner. Our stated goal for the entire trip was to be right there so I could swim across the mighty Columbia from WA to OR on Labor Day the next morning and we made it!

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Early the next rainy dark morning ("Get used to it," I thought to myself), several hundred swimmers loaded onto a sternwheeler and travelled across the river where we jumped off the not-so-low side in flights of ten. By the time we reached the WA shoreline the sun had come out and before we jumped into the sweet water a rainbow appeared and spanned the course like a magical map. I held my nose and goggles and was the last one in after my new friend, Alcatraz Joe, who was celebrating his 75th birthday. I adjusted my goggles and started swimming easily for the border in the middle of the river to re-enter Oregon after a decade away. After 6 days of driving it felt heavenly to move and stretch with each stroke. I pulled my arms thru the pale green river waters which are home to the salmon and sturgeon I had worked for years to save. I thought of the waterfalls the dams had drowned but could not feel their pull. Each stroke brought me closer to crossing over as I swam directly and willingly towards Mt. Hood - the same white pointed peak I was so happy to see receding behind me a decade ago. The water was warm and the happy arms of my family greeted me with a dry towel as I emerged under the rainbow's end to begin our new life here. Again.

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K3

Once More to the Lake

I woke up this morning shivering next to Bella. It has been in the 90's during the day but it cools off quickly in these Maine woods and I need to put a quilt back on the bed. "Mom, are we staying for the whole week?" Bella asked my still closed eyes. "Good, 'cuz Danielle's Mom says they are staying for the week too," she said snuggling in, assured that all was well in her 5-year-old world. She and her new playmate would have many more hours spent swimming to the raft and playing house between the red boat house and the big, wooden swingset.
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No matter where in the world I have been for the rest of the year, I have spent some part of almost every summer of my life on Pocasset Lake and on Richardson's Beach doing exactly what Bella is doing. This year she is finally able to swim to the raft by herself, a milestone she and all my kids have attained over the years, like my generation before them. If you look at the lake from above, it is shaped like a big, blue teddy bear lying on its back and gazing up at the sky from the green woods that surround it. Our beach is perched on the left shoulder before the open white doors of the boat house which have watched over all of us as we learned to swim in the sweet waters and rubbed our feet in the sand.
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This morning I emerged from the cool darkness of my back bedroom with Bella in tow and opened the sliding doors of the screened-in porch to greet the rising sun. A loon called loudly from the waters of Pickerel Pond sparkling in the sun behind the cabin. Yesterday's beach towels hung on the line, the neat procession of our new Save the Bay swim towels interrupted by Snoopy and Betty Boop. Slowly, everyone makes the transition from the cool darkness of their dreams to the skylit brightness of the cabin where the sun and the loons and I with my coffee are ready to greet them.
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It is another morning in Maine and soon we will all don our bathing suits and sunscreen for another day spent on our beach. We who have grown up with the taste of this water on our tongues will watch over our children as they learn its flavor. We will line up our chairs on the beach and stare out beyond the raft anchored to our shore by its yellow buoys to the opposite shoreline whose profile of trees and hills we have memorized unknowingly in our brains. It satisfies us because it is familiar. We will talk of our lives spent mostly away from this place we all love so viscerally until our voices trail off and the lure of the lake draws us back to the present. We will all realize that we are here and we are hot and even the older folks will eventually end up in the lake once more. We will run our fingers through its liquidity and catch glimpses of the fish who are drawn to the brightness of the shallow waters but quickly dart away to darker depths, frightened by our motion. We will float, surrounded by its willingness to hold us, and gaze up at the sky like so many misplaced buttons on our teddy bear's shoulder.
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The lake will know us and the loons will sing our names until our ashes are scattered and our cry becomes a distant echo.
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K3

I swim because I am part fish...

As promised, check out the following link to see my 3 seconds of fame on a Save the Bay commercial! Hot off the press... Tomorrow, we swim!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prjZIjHcsZE