And suddenly, just like that, seven days has come to an end. This morning the lake is blanketed in a thin fog and the thermometer that hangs on the front porch says...46. We will have breakfast, pack up and head to the airport in Portland for a late afternoon flight home. We will leave this place, but it will be some time before this place leaves us.
When we get back home, we will finally turn on a television. We will shuffle through our mail. We will fall back into the comforting routine to which we have become so accustomed. But it will not be a seamless transition. Spending a week up here rearranges your expectations of what life can be...at least what it can be without an itinerary or humidity.
We thought about taking the ferry over to Islesboro or Vinalhaven one day but we both secretly resented the fact that the ferry company insisted upon a fixed schedule of departure. We knew what they were up to with their scheduled departures. They were trying to impose order on our vacation and we were having none of it!
We would have been more inclined to make some of the many tantalizing side trips that abound here on the Midcoast of Maine had the weather not been so radiantly sublime all week. It's difficult to make yourself put the rental car in reverse and back out of the driveway leaving a sun-splashed lake and 75 degrees to go...anywhere.
But, what makes vacations special is the fact that they are rare. To appreciate them, one has to have the sort of sufficiently vigorous life from which vacations are needed. So we come back to Richmond and crank that life up again. But something is changing for us. We are in the process of planning out the next act of our lives and that next act will feature a lake house in Maine. Next summer, a month rental. The following summer, the hope and prayer is, our own place and an entire summer here. The kids will come and stay for a week or two, our families for another, and then friends. It will be like running a bed and breakfast that doesn't charge anything, sorta like vacation welfare! Neither of us can imagine anything more fun than the chance to introduce the people we love the most to this glorious place.
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