Goldenrod of Flourish
Aug. 20th, 2021 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoBack from our mini-holiday, and glad to be so. As so many things are, it was both glorious and exhausting. The weather couldn't have been more beautiful, in terms of blue skies adorned with perfect snow-white friezes of cloud. The water of Lake Michigan was unbelievably warm and stunningly delightful. How could there be a downside to all this, you might ask? Well, the downside in fact was that it was TOO DARN HOT, and this created a few problems. Tuesday, we arrived, had a snack by the river, and then went straight to the beach for a delicious swim. We took our own food, so we were able to provide ourselves with soup and things without having to deal with restaurants. Wednesday we packed up all our beach gear and walked down a beautiful and relatively short trail to the more solitary end of the beach. The Sparrowhawk valiantly insisted on porting the portable umbrella in its handy carrying case. The bit of the trail that was flooded for several years is flooded yet again. Someone had placed some branches across it as a makeshift bridge. A nice woman who was also on the trail essayed this bridge rather dubiously, so I offered her the Sparrowhawk's walking stick. It helped her over nicely, and then she extended it back to me so I could climb over as well. The Sparrowhawk himself preferred the folded umbrella as a prop. When we got to the beach, I swam for an hour or more, and even the Sparrowhawk went in twice.
So far, this sounds wonderful. And it was.
But even after exercising as much care as possible in the form of hats, umbrella, sunscreen, etc., we still got blasted by the sun. So on Thursday, we tried to be sensible. It was very hot again, and very sunny, and intensely humid as well. Our poor irradiated skins were already tingling, so we decided to take a nice walk in the woods, and maybe swim in the evening when the sun had declined from its sovereignty. Let's take the Logging Trail loop, we said. We can enjoy a leisurely ramble in the shade, we said. The first half of the trail was fun, looking at different mushrooms and trying to figure out where the old Eagle's Nest trail might have started. At a certain point, though, the mosquitoes showed up, we were sweat-soaked, and the trail turned out to be a lot longer than we remembered. By the time we got back to the car, there was a mutual agreement that we were exhausted and definitely could not go to the beach, where the sun was still blazing down. We went back to our inn, where we peeled off our damp and oppressive garments, turned up the AC, and drank a lot of ice water. We never did get back to the beach that day.
This morning, we got up and weren't sure what to do, having sunburned ourselves on one day and exhausted ourselves on the next. We decided to pack up and enjoy our coffee by the river. The river is always very soothing to the weary and burnt, who are saddened by not being able to do all the things we used to do a million years ago when the world was young. Eventually we concluded that we would not try to go for any more walks, but just head for the beach, have another lovely swim, and go home before it got any hotter. And so we did.
Meanwhile, I was getting texts from a guy we'll call Nebraska, who was involved in another branch of the same cult-like organization we once belonged to. He had come to visit our old friend and neighbor Wol, who was in the very same branch with us. I pointed out that we were out of town, but he eventually suggested that he could bring Wol up to see us tomorrow evening for a few hours. He also informed us that Wol has Alzheimer's and that his kids have taken his car keys away, and that Wol is increasingly difficult to talk to. Not the best way to hear such news, alas. Too much sadness. Now that I'm back, in retrospect, the whole trip was glorious. And now I'll return to my normal routine: shop for food and prepare another meal for another pair of wayfarers.
So far, this sounds wonderful. And it was.
But even after exercising as much care as possible in the form of hats, umbrella, sunscreen, etc., we still got blasted by the sun. So on Thursday, we tried to be sensible. It was very hot again, and very sunny, and intensely humid as well. Our poor irradiated skins were already tingling, so we decided to take a nice walk in the woods, and maybe swim in the evening when the sun had declined from its sovereignty. Let's take the Logging Trail loop, we said. We can enjoy a leisurely ramble in the shade, we said. The first half of the trail was fun, looking at different mushrooms and trying to figure out where the old Eagle's Nest trail might have started. At a certain point, though, the mosquitoes showed up, we were sweat-soaked, and the trail turned out to be a lot longer than we remembered. By the time we got back to the car, there was a mutual agreement that we were exhausted and definitely could not go to the beach, where the sun was still blazing down. We went back to our inn, where we peeled off our damp and oppressive garments, turned up the AC, and drank a lot of ice water. We never did get back to the beach that day.
This morning, we got up and weren't sure what to do, having sunburned ourselves on one day and exhausted ourselves on the next. We decided to pack up and enjoy our coffee by the river. The river is always very soothing to the weary and burnt, who are saddened by not being able to do all the things we used to do a million years ago when the world was young. Eventually we concluded that we would not try to go for any more walks, but just head for the beach, have another lovely swim, and go home before it got any hotter. And so we did.
Meanwhile, I was getting texts from a guy we'll call Nebraska, who was involved in another branch of the same cult-like organization we once belonged to. He had come to visit our old friend and neighbor Wol, who was in the very same branch with us. I pointed out that we were out of town, but he eventually suggested that he could bring Wol up to see us tomorrow evening for a few hours. He also informed us that Wol has Alzheimer's and that his kids have taken his car keys away, and that Wol is increasingly difficult to talk to. Not the best way to hear such news, alas. Too much sadness. Now that I'm back, in retrospect, the whole trip was glorious. And now I'll return to my normal routine: shop for food and prepare another meal for another pair of wayfarers.
