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Summmmmmmer time.

8/27/2020

Each year, I find myself taking photos that I hope will catch the visual essence of the sweetness of the season.

This year, of course, I've snapped any number of pictures of the farm, but really, summertime in the North Country?

It's about cottage life, boat-rides, and the Water (whichever body of water, it's always capitalized: The Lake, The River, The Beach).

For over a hundred years, my family has spent weekends or weeks or the whole season on the granite shores of the St. Lawrence River.

The scent of old life-preservers and clean seaweed.

Sleeping porches. The "whap" of a screen door pulled shut by a long spring.

Pine needles. Lichen.The lapping of water under the wooden dock.

And the inexorable march of Labor Day...

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The Would-Be Farm Summer Vacation

8/9/2020

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This is the longest stretch in his adult life that my favorite skipper has spent away from sailboats.

Jeff contemplates a pile of fresh bear scat.

For decades, we schedule our year around various regattas. We've missed weddings and birthdays because of our sailing calendar. As I remember, we'd been together for five years before taking a trip that was NOT related to sailing.

Because of regattas, we've traveled to Italy and Sardinia and Greece and all over South America. And North America. Hawaii even. The year the Flying Scot North American championship was held in Texas, we planned a summer adventure that took us looping out West. All for competition at the mercy of wind.

Racing on the bounding main –– it's a sport, a calling, a joy. It's the bones of our life together.

Then along comes the Covid-19 Pandemic, leaving us high and dry.

Which is how we've managed to finish the Woodbee in a matter of months.

When last we left the build, the 600-square-foot structure was dried in, with a pair of walls and a loft accessible by pull-down ladder. Jeff and I had put down flooring, slathered paint on everything that held still, and set the wood stove into place.

When we arrived in late April, the list of to-dos was not inconsiderable: walls, plumbing, electricity, kitchen, bathroom...