The
rock came home from a recent visit to the Ham Branch of the Gale River, where
my husband and children took the dog for a quick after-dinner dip and brief
respite from last week’s heavy heat. No matter how many toys a child has, it
seems the simplest things are the most amusing, and rocks are high on the list.
This one, gray and bumpy and fist-sized, became a treasure because of its shape
and my 4-year-old’s recent fascination with hearts.
Fresh
wildflowers appear regularly in our home and change with the evolving season.
The small vase that holds them, an old spice jar, is filled in spring with the
bursting yellow of dandelions until the variety of summer blooms through the
fields. Now we have yarrow and purple clover, birdsfoot trefoil, daisies, and
wild black-eyed Susans.
My
son noticed a swath of daisies in a part of the field we can’t see from the
house while out mowing with my husband the other day. So, as the heat waned in
the late afternoon, we all headed down the grassy path cut through the field to
see the wildflowers. Along the way we discovered another of summer’s treasures
– wild blueberries.
We
have lived in this house for nine summers, and last year was the first we found
blueberries. Now that we know they are there, we find the low bushes
everywhere. We discovered this year’s first blueberries the same day we picked
our first peas from the garden and ate them, sweet and small and warm, straight from the pods. Both the
berries and the peas are little, and it takes a good bit of effort to gather
just one bite. But, oh, what a bite it is!
On
shelves throughout our home, there are treasures from other summers in other
places – rocks etched with small fossils, found during a climb on Treasury
Mountain near my former home in Crested Butte, Colorado; sparkling white chunks
of quartz from an old mine near there; jars of seashells from Cape Cod; a bent mountain bike chain ring that recalls a fun and challenging ride; a
small gray stone rubbed smooth by the ocean and picked up along a beach in the
west of Ireland.
Winter’s
treasures of rosy cheeks, crisp snow angels, and flying ski runs down a
mountain are harder to hold inside a house, just as the colors of autumn fade
too quickly, and spring’s emergent green grows soon into full-fledged summer.
But summer’s treasures are collectible and happy reminders in colder, drearier
days that the sun always shines eventually.
This
summer is young still, and many of its treasures yet to be discovered,
collected, enjoyed. But summer passes quickly in a splash of the pool or the river, a week at the beach, the sounds of
laughter in the sunshine. Most of the blueberries in the field now are still green,
offering the promise of many pints to pick in the weeks to come. The peas are
among the garden’s first gift in this hot, wet summer, and we’re looking forward to harvesting other
vegetables growing there, slowly it seems (and enjoying the farmers’ market in
the meantime).
Some
of the treasures we gather in this season will fade – the fresh lettuce, the
clamor of birdsong in morning, the wildflowers in the jar, the sun-browned skin
on our faces. Others will keep awhile. We’ll fill the freezer with the extra
bounty from the garden and the field – plump blackberries, blanched green
vegetables, and zippy basil pesto. A few more treasures will land on shelves
and windowsills. In our hearts and memories we hold a bit of every season –
fall’s color, winter’s invigorating chill, spring’s awakening, and the
treasures of summer.
Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul, published on her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears in the July 12, 2013 edition of the Record-Littleton.
