We and the mosquitoes arrived at Roseledge at Sunday dusk, none the worse for wear but VERY HAPPY to be here. Monitor heater kicked on, Internet connection did not, and we drank glass after glass of water to end the dry travel day. Beautiful Memorial Day dawned with Taps, the always perfect parade and a wreath thrown into the harbor. Fewer walkers and parked cars on Sea Street, which I hope is not an ominous sign of fewer visitors again this summer. And we gave my sister a proper seaside sendoff so she can haunt forever the wonders of Marshall Point.
This place of land and sea and possibility is ours forever.
Charlie has been here and gone, but he leaves in his wake a commode with pillow on the front porch, an operating webcam, new paintings of buoys and boats, modestly repositioned bookshelves and Roseledge Books t-shirt display, enough co-op purchases of peanut butter and chicken wine to last at least until the first friends stop by with a car, and a summer’s worth of 2 part Jet and 1 part French Roast coffee from Rock City Roasters. So Roseledge is perfectly outfitted, as always.
I am currently finishing (from last summer) Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn about Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot’s giving birth to our national parks and forests. I love Timothy Egan, in part because I learn from someone who lives, loves and knows whereof he writes. I also loved his books The Good Rain and Lasso the Wind, both also about the west and its resources. I saved Julia Spencer-Fleming’s One was a Soldier for a Roseledge read (without distractions), and am so glad I did. The book’s attention to returning veterans deserves thoughtful consideration, even as Reverend Clare and Chief Russ continue their enjoyable dance. And for a book that combines the glorious wilds of the North with a disquisition on many ways of loving, I recommend William Kent Kreuger’s Thunder Bay which I finished last night as the electricity was off and the rare sun faded.
Lupine is early, forsythia's gone. Sunshine come back to us, please.
To sum:
We’re here, we’re here, we’re here,
on the porch emitting cheer.
No time to fret, we’re ready to let
the summer’s good times begin.
Hello from Wonderland.
(For those who have forgotten what Wonderland looks like, or not, the webcam is up and looking. See last of pages on right.)