The breeze this morning was cooling, but it is disappearing. The clouds periodically give way to the sun. The 74° we have now will soon be 80°, the lowest temperature for the next three days. I feel like a hermit, a cool, comfortable hermit but a hermit nonetheless. A friend is coming late this afternoon for cocktails which sounds so 1950ish that we both should be wearing Donna Reed ensembles complete with pearls and dainty shoes with pointed toes. I need a brick patio and a husband wearing an ascot.
My town had woods everywhere. The ones below my house weren’t very big, but they had blueberry bushes, the swamp and a wonderful old tree with a split trunk which served as a plank for the pirate ship and whatever else filled our imaginings. Once we found a tiny wooden shack made with boards of all different sizes. Inside were magazines some of which had naked women. We didn’t go back there for the longest time, and when we did, the shack was gone. All that was left were a few boards. A water tower was at the top of a hill at one edge of the woods. We always wanted to climb the tower, but we never did. A small outcrop of rocks surrounded one side of the tank. Once we’d reached the tower, we used to sit on the rocks and rest as if we’d climbed Mount Everest instead of a grassy hill which wasn’t very steep.
We’d move out of the woods to the field across the street and watch the horses and try to tempt them to us with grass but we weren’t ever successful. The closer we got, the further away they got. Sometimes we’d hike to another set of woods to a pond where we’d once built a raft. We got the idea from Swiss Family Robinson. It sank on its maiden voyage.
We’d arrive home late in the afternoon. We were always grimy, sweaty and thirsty, the best signs of a great summer day.
