Countdown to Summer

The countdown to summer vacation is on at my house, and it is on in earnest. Maybe it is because May slid into June through a near-constant string of sunshine. Or because the California cousins will be here before my New Hampshire kids are even done with the school year. Perhaps it’s that my two 3^rd graders spent several spring days mired in standardized testing, which can cause even the most ardent of students to bemoan school.

Whatever the reason, this year my kids have known exactly how many school days are left at any given time for the past few weeks. We’re almost there. A few more days. And here, on the cusp of summer, the anticipatory promise of all the good things that season should be is nearly overwhelming.

We’ve had an early taste of some of our favorite summer things already. A few years ago it snowed Memorial Day Weekend, and the kids built a snowman beneath the newly unfurled leaves of the maple trees in the front yard. This year, Memorial Day Weekend was a sweltering tease of the approaching season, and we took full advantage, packing a load of pre-summer fun into three little days. We did a quick loop up our favorite short hike, joined a friend posse to cool off at Echo Lake, and took our first dip of the year in the Ham Branch.

Since then we’ve added trips to the tennis court, pedaled through our family’s favorite bike ride, and opened our mini-golf season. We have broken out popsicles and ice cream on the front porch. The lawn has been mowed several times. The fire pit is ready for s’mores and socializing. The garden is in – mostly, anyway – and I can almost taste those first delicious peas, even though they’re still a few weeks away.

And that is, perhaps, the impetus behind the countdown to summer: sweet anticipation of what we know is to come. Afternoons at the pool or the river. Feet in the sand at the beach or the dirt in the garden. Hikes up a few taller mountains, perhaps, or exploring new bike trails through the woods. Impromptu soccer games in the front yard. The rush of cooling air from soaring through back-and-forth arcs on the backyard swings. The twinkling magic of a million fireflies flickering through the field and of a gazillion stars overhead.

With all of these things on the horizon, the two summer events my kids say they’re most looking forward to are The Cousins and The Cape.

The first crew of cousins arrives from California during my kids’ last week of school. There are certain traditions we share with them during each annual visit – a hike up Bald Knob, a paddle around Long Pond, trips to the river my brothers and I cooled off in when we were kids, evenings by a backyard fire. The second set of cousins comes from Tennessee later in the summer, instigating gatherings with the other side of the family – and lots more fun.

The other most-highly anticipated week of the summer is our annual pilgrimage to Cape Cod. This will be the fifth year my children have journeyed from the quiet mountains of home to the crowded beaches of the Cape. During those years we have settled into favorite beaches, ice cream haunts, and mini golf courses. It helps, of course, to have friends who live down the street and are happy to play tour guide for the week we are there, ferrying us to places only the locals know. Each year we find at least one new place to explore.

That trip, though, is still many weeks in the future, many summer experiences down the road. For now, the full promise of summer sits just out of reach. It will be here soon enough. A few more days of reluctant early mornings and the confines of school days. A few more days to cross off the calendar. The countdown is on; summer will be here in 3-2-1.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the June 10, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Swimming Holes

It’s one of the great joys of summer: splashing in a clear, cool river on a hot, hazy day. At the advent of the season, when kids can almost taste the freedom of school’s final release and ice cream shops are readying for customers, regional publications put out their lists of favorite swimming holes – the most secret, most scenic, most secluded ones.

Yankee magazine has done a swimming hole list. New Hampshire magazine has, too. Heck, even the BBC published a short list of Vermont swimming holes a few years ago. There are entire websites and Facebook pages dedicated solely to swimming holes. I guess some people are well-traveled connoisseurs of these refreshing summer haunts, but I like the old familiar ones best.

There’s a swimming hole down the road I’ve visited since I was a child, where I return now with kids and dog on the hottest, muggiest days – or just when we need something easy to do away from the house. It’s not the deepest or the most beautiful, and it’s certainly no secret. But it’s conveniently close to home, and it offers endless cool fun on the long, hot dog days of summer.

My brothers and I splashed in this same spot when we were kids. For us, who came to the mountains mainly during winter, the river was a summer wonder. We were used to crossing the small bridge spanning the Ham Branch when its current was concealed in thick layers of snow and ice, a mere silvery sliver of moving water visible through all that white.

Sometimes, though, we found our way north in the summer. On hot days we’d make the short trek down from the house to find the river transformed in its summer color. We built dams and watched tiny fish swim through the water, threw rocks just to see the splashes they’d create. All things kids at rivers have probably always done. Things my kids at this river do now.

Some days we come to the swimming hole prepared with towels and snacks and snorkeling masks for peering through the moving water to see what’s below the surface. Often there are cars parked along both sides of the road, with sunbathers, splashers, and swimmers strewn upstream and down. Sometimes we have the spot all to ourselves.

The best swimming is right below the grated metal bridge, which hums with the occasional passing rumble of car or pickup truck tires. We wander the rocky river islands seeking flat stones for skimming and throw sticks into the deepest water for the dog, who prefers the crispness of winter to the heat and biting bugs of summer. I think swimming is summer’s sole redemption in the dog’s mind.

The spot where my brothers and I used to pile rocks as big as we could carry in a futile attempt to alter the water’s flow is a bit wider now than it was 30 years ago. But someone – or, likely, a series of someones – has extended the dam. Rocks are added and removed probably with each visitor. My children consult with each other as they work on their own renovations to the dam, placing fist-sized stones in the larger breaches, handfuls of pebbles to fill the gaps between, sand and clay to cover it all until the next rain and rising current.

The river flows through anyway, a comforting gurgle of water moving easily downstream.

Other times our swimming hole outings are brief. We stop by on the way home for a quick dip, or run down after dinner to cool off before bedtime. On one such evening venture a couple of years ago, as we stood with our toes in the water, my brother and sister-in-law came floating down the river in inner tubes, along with a pair of friends and a cooler (in its very own tube) ferrying refreshments. Cool rivers on hot nights are not just for kids and dogs, after all.

I’ve visited other swimming holes, of course. There’s one a bit further upstream where we happily slip and slide down gentle, flowing waterfalls, like river otters playing in the waves along the worn-smooth boulders. We sometimes go south to the Pemi, finding cool pockets of water pooled in smooth rock basins carved deep by eons of flowing water. We have found bullfrogs and thousands of tadpoles swimming in shallow concavities near the edge of the Pemi and huge, juicy blackberries nearby.

I have dipped into the deep, perfect pool at the base of Bridal Veil Falls, a sweet reward for a not-too-strenuous hike. One summer during college I leapt from cliff ledges along some Vermont river into the cool expanse below. I have waded into the almost unbearable chill of high alpine lakes in Colorado, enveloped in solitude and impossible beauty.

I am, like most of us probably, part intrepid explorer and part contented homebody. I love to wander to new places and experiences. But often I find myself returning to the familiar, to the places of my good memories. Places like my old standby swimming hole. It’s not the most scenic or secret or secluded. But it’s a darned good place to be on a hot summer day.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the July 24, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

Summer's treasures

On the windowsill above our kitchen sink are a heart-shaped stone from the river and a small bouquet of wildflowers, both gathered by small hands not far from our front door. These are summer’s treasures, and gentle reminders – as I’m doing the dishes, making meals, or sorting mail – of the joyful, fleeting magic of both summer and childhood.

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.