Summertime

Meadows in Whiting, VT.

It's been a while since I have dashed off a post here; the last 2-1/2 months had flown past, and we have advanced from the uncertain weather if late spring, through bursts of unseasonable heat, apples trees and lilacs blooming 3 weeks earlier than usual, a few rainy spells, clouds of blackflies and mosquitoes.

In May, I was sick. All of May, except the first 4 days. On the 5th I had a tickle in the throat, and on the 6th when I woke, my first thought was, "My god, what have I come down with?" My throat hurt when I breathed; tonsils and throat scarlet with gray-white streaks and spots, and a blotchy red rash like a mantle around my neck, chest and shoulders. I was supposed to work 4 straight days of open-to-close by myself, and I was going to - did 2 days, with no voice and no energy, sitting with my head on the counter, trying not to fall asleep between customers, but on the 8th I was sure I had strep, and so went to the ER and found that I did not. I said that as long as I didn't have strep, I'd have to go to work, but the Dr was very concerned, and wrote me an excuse note on his prescription pad, saying I had to stay home. I missed 2 days of work, but that's all. The sore throat lingered for 2 weeks, the cough for 4. I ate cough drops and Sucrets until I felt sick to my stomach. I coughed myself awake at night, coughed until my throat cramped and my ribs felt bruised. I took NyQuil, which drugged me to sleep, and gave me a hangover. When I took Mom for a checkup on the 19th of May, I was still coughing, and Mom's Dr, worried, listened to MY lungs, thinking I might have pneumonia. By early June, the cough was gone, but I felt weary even then.

June ran past as if it were being pursued. Roses and poppies and phlox burst into bloom, and tiger swallowtail butterflies danced in profusion from flower to flower. Grass deepened, daisies and clover and fleabane sprinkled the meadows. I drove up to Burlington one weekend, through heavy rain all the way up Rt. 30 to Middlebury. It's a gorgeous drive, even in gray weather, up through the lake region, up Hubbardton Gulf, past the sad decaying remains of the once-grand hotel Hyde Manor in Sudbury. From Whiting on north, the road is a mess, pavement broken and cracked, crumbling off at the edges, full of holes and chasms that were masked in deep puddles of rain water. The last 30 miles of the drive took nearly as long as the first 60. Rt 30 ends in Middlebury, and after the miles of jarring and rattling, it felt like I was flying on the wide, smooth Rt. 7. I stopped for coffee at Maplefields, and reached Burlington only about 20 minutes after my original ETA.

That weekend was a delight. Doing a little shopping on Saturday, then being outdoors almost all day on Sunday, viewing the amazing Champlain Thrust Fault on Rock Point, seeing ducks, muskrats, bugs and birds among the lush ferns and cattails along some ponds in the Intervale, seeing pitcher plants in bloom in Colchester Bog. I got a vicious sunburn, scorched painfully red where I missed with the sunblock.

The best part was visiting the Thrust Fault, where a huge, thick layer of dolomite limestone is shoved over the top of crumbly shale, a 60'-thick slab of pinkish white over the dark blue-gray, threaded through with veins of white.

The Thrust Fault. Note the figure standing on the beach.

Our Goldsworthy-inspired "sculpture"

The shingle beach beneath this geological spectacle is made of uncountable shards of these two different rocks, polished to smooth worry-stones by the tireless waves of Lake Champlain. Ber and I had a snack on this beach, in the shade of a twisted cedar, and then, inspired by Andy Goldsworthy, made a line of pink limestone rocks from the water across the 20 feet of sloping beach and up onto the lower shelf of the shale cliff. I wonder if any visitor since has seen it and wondered, and been inspired to arrange other rocks.

We've started the garden, such as it is; the soil is nearly all spent, is thin dust when dry, hard clods when wet, and doesn't even want to grow weeds. There is some dill growing, and radishes, and the tomato plants are starting to show signs of interest in life after standing still, without new growth, for more than a week after transplanting. Lucy was down for a week, and helped Dad plant some potatoes while I had to put on nylons and makeup and go to work. Maybe this weekend's rain will make them grow, but I don't know. The seed was pretty shabby, and the soil is poor.

We have birds in abundance. Rose-breasted grosbeaks, hairy and downy woodpeckers, goldfinches, purple finches, hummingbirds, red- and white-breasted nuthatches, chickadees, bluejays, 4 kinds of sparrows, juncos, vireos, mourning doves, robins (including a pair that nested over the door of the barn, and had conniption fits whenever Dad went in or out with the tractor), thrushes, warblers and finches, flycatchers, wrens, ravens, grackles and crows. We even have evening grosbeaks, and are glad to see them, as they seem to have thinned out in recent years. They look like clowns, with their yellow, black and white plumage, green beaks and orange feet, and they look around, saying "CHOIP!" an loud, hoarse voices. We love the choip-birds.

I love the summer birds, and miss them a lot in the winter. I love the winter birds, too, in their austere gray and black plumage, with cardinals and blue jays to add a splash of color in the colorless days. But In winter I miss the colors and voices of the summer birds, the varied songs, the chatters, whistles and cheeps, the plaintive song of a white-throated sparrow, the ethereal trickle of a hermit thrush's song, the chant of the oven-bird, the "witchety-witchety-witch!" of the yellowthroat. It's nice in the late fall, when everyone who is going south has gone, and on a still day you can hear the whisper of the river at the other end of the village, and hear twigs rasp against one another in the woods, but I would never be sorry to hear a thrush sing.

We have had our first hot spell of the year. Well, it did get hot in March and April a couple of times, but the heat was brief, the air dry, and cold air followed with a sobering reminder of the earliness of the season. During the last few days of April, up to 20" of snow fell on the northern half of the state, and enough down here to whiten the grass, and refresh the ski slopes for the last few runs of the season. There will be no cold weather after this July heat wave; it will be "cooler" next week - only in the mid-80s.

Luckily, the worst of the heat didn't hit here until after the July 4th festivities. Lucy and I went to the Wardsboro parade (somehow less boisterous than usual), burned some hot dogs over a wood fire in the yard, and saw fireworks in Londonderry and Manchester. In Derry, we were sitting directly under the explosions, which were none too high in the air, and had to watch out for hot streamers of sparks that landed and sizzled in the grass around us. We viewed the Manchester show from about 1/2 mile away, and though they were enjoyable, I liked the Derry show better, feeling the "FOOM!" of the mortars and the bone-shaking bang as the shells exploded only a couple of hundred feet over our heads. It's a delight to listen to the explosions rolling back and forth between the mountains. I do love fireworks.

Since Monday it has been too hot, bad hot, scary hot. It was over 100 in Brattleboro on the 6th on July, when Lucy and I went shopping. Haze thickened the air and hid even close mountains, turning their green slopes into a milky watercolor wash against the glaring yellow sky. A walk down the driveway to get the paper made one flood with sweat that couldn't evaporate. Laundry hung wet on the line for 2 days, despite the scorching sunlight. Anything cold - a jug of milk, a glass of water, bottle of beer, the toilet tank - would sweat streams of condensation; the bathtub remained beaded with water 14 hours after a morning shower.

There is nothing to do in this weather but endure. When cold, it's easy enough to get warm: put on woollies, build a fire, drink something hot, move around. But when the weather is disgustingly hot and the air soupy with humidity, there's nothing you can do but sit around and sweat. Air conditioners help with the temperature, but turn the air clammy.

The A/C at work doesn't work well; it hit 84 in the store on the 8th, and still felt arctic compared with the gross weather outside. People would come in, gasping, their faces shiny with sweat, and take long, appreciative gulps of the moldy-cellar-scented "cool" air, finding it refreshing.

I had to work on the 4th of July. An abomination. No one except essential service workers should have to work on that day. We get Christmas off, and Easter, and I don't give two hoots about Easter, but have to work on Independence Day. When people should be out watching or marching in parades or having a barbacue or boating or lying in the shade under a tree and celebrating Independence independently, they came pouring, flocking, flooding into the store, their brows wrinkled as they debated what size pillows to get, or what shade of taupe towels go with their imported limestone bathrooms. I didn't get to eat lunch that day, having to wait on so many helpless, clueless spendthrifts who wouldn't know the Preamble to the Declaration if Thomas Jefferson himself read it to them.

I HATE working on the 4th of July. It's just not right.

I have not been in the woods but once. Last summer the loggers were here for 4 months, and though to look at the mountain from afar, you would not know any trees were cut, but they took out loads and loads and loads. In early May I went up to the crest of the hill past the Pippin Tree, and did not recognize the woods, even though new growth was healing the wounded soil. It was heartbreaking for me; I felt as someone must upon seeing their home vandalized or flooded or otherwise altered all out of any familiar shape. Though I know the logging is beneficial, and the state forester who came to see about some disease afflicting the pines said that the loggers did a terrific job, it still made me cry. Ber reported that they took the cluster of soft maples that grew over the old spring on the side of the mountain - took them out for firewood, for which we got only $5 per cord. It had been a hard day, and I was tired, and seeing my lovely sacred woods all ripped up hurt me greatly, and I sat on a rock and cried. I have not been back in the woods since.

There's a ball game on, Boston at Toronto. Most on the Red Sox Roster is on the DL; there was a spell where they lost 4 key players within a week to broken bones and strained muscles. The new 3rd baseman, Adrian Beltre, has run over 2 left fielders, breaking a total of 9 ribs (5 on Ellsbury, 4 on Hermida). It's a miracle that the Sox are even ahead of the hopeless Orioles, let aone still within striking distance of the ^&%!@%$ Yankees.

So it is July, heading into the All-Star Break. Hollyhocks and primroses, black-eyed susans and wild chicory are in bloom, and everywhere are masses of wild orange daylilies, glowing like coals. The milkweed is in bloom (too early) and goldenrod is budded (WAY too early), and on hot dry afternoons the cicadas buzz and drone in the treetops. Farmers' markets overflow with vegetables and flowers, and every weekend is full of Events - fairs, workshops, concerts, plays, things to do.

Sometimes the best thing to do in the summertime is nothing, but sit by a cool riverside and watch the water-striders dimple the surface, casting strange shadows on the golden rocks beneath the water. Or wake early and watch the sky turn rosy with dawn, and watch fingers of sunlight come down through the woods to the northeast. Savor the richness of the days, and sweet, cool nights. Try not to think of things that are wrong with the world - the oil disaster, the unemployment rate, people acting like idiots over religions that no one really understands. Just smell the greenness of the air, and listen to the cicadas and thrushes, and savor these days, even if they are hot and sticky, because the days are already getting shorter.