Visit to Paradise

I just spent the past week in my favorite place in the world. While I was there I sculled a single shell, swam across the cove every day with my dad, sailed with my cousin, ran in the trees, canoed with my mom, water skied with my brother complete with a face plant that felt like a truck injury the next day, and lazed on the floating dock like a seal soaking up the sun.

The sun however, was very minimal, while the life lessons on genes and nutrition were plentiful. New Hampshire is having a record high rain year and as a result, the blue berries were going wild. Besides the two blueberries pies I made,  I recently acquired a new found love of pancakes. I now have to make up for 22 years of pancakeless mornings by having blueberry pancakes virtually every single day from here on out (a daunting task). Just as I was frying a badcake (as my dad calls them) in oozing butter and watching the blueberries bubble purple on the sides, my 86 year old Grandfather went into his yearly lesson about the genes I inherited. The monologue goes a little something like this,

"Oh Robinson women, they are doomed. Doomed to be fat. OOOhaaahhh you should have seen my sister. She was enormous. And my mother ahh gaadddd! They all start out so thin. Oh when Lizzy (my aunt) was your age she was just beautiful. Thin and beautiful. But then every year she got a little more and a little more well covered. You watch yourself. Every year you'll add a little more on and then one day you will realize you have quite a bit more than you ever anticipated or desired!" 

He speaks of it like a disease I am doomed to and can only watch passively. It doesn't matter if I have a boyfriend over for dinner for the first time, or a room full of cousins; he will still give the lecture.  Luckily I find these little lessons absolutely hysterical. He seems to be worrying himself sick about the doomed poundage I am fatefully walking into. And every year, it was this exact age that "Lizzy was still thin at 22 (insert 16,17, 18 etc). Ooohhhhahhh but the year after that...." 

Besides the life lessons I reviewed, the week was the most peaceful I've had this year. It was incredibly stormy, which made it absolutely beautiful. The storms usually started with wind and lightning in the late afternoon. We sat on the deck and watched the wind whip the leaves of maple, birch and cedar into the darkening sky. The lightning was coming down right behind the lake on the other side of the cove and the combined sound of thunder and and rustling leaves lulled me into a happy stupor. Right before the rain came, all the colors deepened, the blue of the mountains, the green trees, the sky reflecting lake and the heavy clouds. The rain came in torrents that didn't let up until morning.

Most years you can sit down on the dock and swing your feet around without touching water. This year the water was above the sagging parts of the dock. When a boat wake came by, the water jumped through the slats in the wood, soaking the entire dock. And the mushrooms were just having a field day. In a place where I have never seen mushrooms, they were suddenly as abundant as trees. One was literally as big as a toast plate (read: the small plates)  They were spotted, pink, red, brown, lumpy, white, growing on trees, floating in the lake, and even growing on the benches. 

I also saw more loons this year than ever. If you've never heard a loon, I can't even explain the sound they make at night. Its somewhat like a wooden flute, hollow and elemental, eery and long. The sound reverberates down the cove. They are incredibly graceful looking with their bright white and black spots. One day I rowed to a little neighboring cove to look at the lily pads. There were blue lily pad flowers as well as yellow ones. I stopped rowing and started to meditate with my eyes open. A couple of ducks became comfortable enough to walk out on a half submerged tree right next to me. Then two loons glided right by me. They started calling in a short chortling whistle that they don't do at night. The echo seemed to be bouncing of rock walls in every direction. It was incredible. The sunsets were a whole other blog so I will stop boring you all. Needless to say it was very hard to leave.