Sunday, October 18, 2009

The End (Of Boating Season) Is Near


Summertime, and the livin' is easy. Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.

If only.

Last time I checked, summer was gone daddy gone. This morning I fleeced myself out of my warm New Zealand slippers and into my deck shoes. My sockless toes shivered as we left the warmth of the house and greeted the 'sun not yet up' morn. My camera nuzzled close for warmth. Two steps onto the cedar boardwalk that takes me to the lake and "holy shit!", I nearly go down. Frost on cedar. Slope. Think luge. Better yet, think skeleton. Mine. I caught myself at the last moment before taking a one way ride back to the camera store for parts and servicing. It could have been messy.

Note to self: wear crampons from now until May. Also, get the winter tires put on and look out long underwear.

On mornings like this, summer's warm winds are a fleeting memory. Fall has risen to its full height and is now waning. The leaves have rightfully left. Can you blame them? I walk past the frost coated, formerly awesome blossoms of my garden. They used to sing to me in the morning, now they're dead heads blown by my passing stride.

Alas, the seasons are a changing and I'm helpless to stop them. I dream of marching to a different beat, yet I strum along with cold fingers, year after year. Such is the fate of this man, torn from the tropical womb of the imagination and born into life's igloo.

I am summer.

What if I lived in the tropics? Would I still be summer? Can one really appreciate summer without winter? Can you really appreciate pleasure without pain? Can there be heaven without Canadian Idol?

Of course not. Supposedly there's two months and three days until winter. That's pretty funny. For me there are only two seasons: summer and winter. I know what season it is right now because I don't see any high cotton growin'.

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