Yes, in 100 days Pam and I will depart Short Pump’s hearth and home for six glorious weeks on Quantabacook Lake. Our days and nights will become oriented around a completely different life than the one we live here in Virginia. Instead of everything revolving around Dunnevant Financial and River’s Edge Elementary School, life will revolve around the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, and the delightful things it lights up on the surface of the water, the fog as it shimmers across it in the morning, the parade of colors unleashed upon it by the setting sun in the evening, the way the wind stirs it violently when a storm crosses in the afternoon. Pam will kayak on it for hours at a time. She will launch out on her paddle board, sometimes alone, sometimes with Lucy at her side. I will bring fish from it, admire their beauty, then release them to fight another day. We will take our meals as close to her as we can, sometimes in animated conversation, sometimes in silence. We will wonder at the sudden appearance of a loon. Pam will engage them in conversation. Then as magically as they appeared, they will slip under the water without so much as a ripple. We will throw Lucy her frisbee from the end of the dock and watch her gracefully cut through the water to retrieve it, over and over again. We will snuggle up around a fire at night as the stars come out, listening to the loons call out. We will sleep like babies.
We will take invigorating walks through the thick and noble Maine woods. I will bring along a bug-zapper shaped like a tennis racket in case the stinging flies are out. (This is no Garden of Eden) We will drive into Camden and Belfast and Rockport and Rockland many times. We will have breakfast at the Camden Deli, shop for fun things at the Smiling Cow, marvel at the the delights to be found at Once a Tree. We will have lunch at The Hoot, dinner at Waterfront and Peter Ott’s, Ports of Italy and Delfino’s. We will shop for oddities at the Farmer’s Co-op. We will get ice cream at Riverducks and the Wild Cow Creamery. We will eat lobster rolls and sausage Reuben’s at Hazel’s. We will buy our groceries at Hannaford’s.
The kids will visit and share all these things with us. We will recall the fun of past trips, the time that Kaitlin’s float burst open leaving her flailing in the freezing water, the first time Sarah made a charcuterie tray and brought it down to the dock with cocktails as we watched the sunset, starting a new tradition. Kaitlin and I will enjoy morning and afternoon coffee together on the dock as we talk about life. All six of us will climb aboard all available lake-worthy crafts and watch the sunset from the middle of the lake at the end of yet another perfect day. Then we will head back to the house and work on a puzzle together.
We will have other visitors probably. We always do it seems. We love sharing this place with friends, especially those who have never been to Maine. We are eager tour guides. But, if its just Pam, Lucy and me thats fine too.
100 days.
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