Summer Magic
08/17/2006 10:17 PM
Weather here is extreme sport. I groused
through much of this summer, pontificating to anyone
and everyone who would listen that we were getting
cheated out of our birthright (as Mainers) for a
stunning season. Every beautiful day seemed to
require payment in blood, or at lease piss and fog.
Then August rolled in and I clamped shut my yapper
and just absorbed. The month has been heaven sent,
but even within these blissful heights of
meteorological consistency, there are days that step
forward from the pack. The nice days here, the really
nice ones, are historical, epic. The whites glisten
blindingly, the sea shimmers, the sky has the
indefinable clarity and radiance peculiar to this
most northeastern of states. Every player in the
environment seems to be shouting "love me! love me!"
and passersby nod knowingly to one another, as if
they and they alone are sharing the same
drug-informed string of revelations. So I walked home
from my haircut and it was like some rural version of
the opening scene from Everybody Says I Love You.
Heck, even the narrow gauge railroad conductor, as
his locomotive barreled along the Eastern Promenade
Trail, looked as though he was ready to burst into
song. I occasionally glanced down at a book I had
planned to walk home reading (this photo captures
just such an instance), but mostly it was just the
blind shining love bouncing off bodies and the sea
and sky, the glorious near-denouement of this most
sacred of seasons.