Summer Blessings

Summer’s arrival was tardy this year, kept at bay by the cold and wet of a lingering spring. But the season of heat and color is here, at last, and the delay has made these first hot days – and the gifts they offer – even more welcome.

After so many long weeks of waiting, as spring’s lilacs fade away and summer’s roses bloom, the blessings of this season seem many.

Fields of lupines flow in a sea of purple from the house toward the woods on one side and the mountains on another. Though they were late to bloom this year – like everything else – this June has brought more lupines than I’ve seen in our fields in years. I guess they, at least, liked the chilly, wet spring.

One afternoon, as I walked through the mowed path in search of a lupine photo, our neighbor called to me that one group of the local bears was out. After grabbing the dog by her leash-less collar and getting her safely inside the house, I spent a good chunk of time observing mama bear as she kept watch by the base of a giant white pine. Her three small cubs scampered high up the tree – 30 feet or more – and spread out along one long limb to nap, one curled up where the branch met the trunk, the other two sprawled along the branch, their fuzzy legs dangling toward the ground, heads on a pillow of scratchy bark.

Beyond the excitement of bears, when I pause outside, I hear the buzzing of bees and of hummingbird wings, where they hover to feed on the flowers we have planted on the porch.

Buttercups, like fields of gold, have turned whole swaths the landscape into its own form of sunshine.

The very air is sweetness, with its mingling scents of roses and sunscreen and freshly-cut grass. And the light now lingers long past dinnertime, inspiring the kids to go out and play later than usual.

We have taken family drives through the protracted twilight and seen other bears in other fields and summer-sleek deer, shed now of their duller winter coats, gleaming deep amber in the fading light. One night we were happy to spot a yearling moose not far from home, all elongated snout and gangly-long legs as he lumbered clumsily along the road in front of us before turning into a field of wildflowers abloom.

From the window or the porch, I watch the soft glow of colors in the sky as it fades slowly from bright summer day to short summer night – and the way the mountains fade gradually into the growing dark.

We’ve enjoyed long porch sits after twilight fades, when the reward for loitering among mosquitoes is the enchanting sound of the hermit thrush trilling somewhere near the forest’s edge, frogs singing from wet places all around us, and the magical twinkling of fireflies through the dusky fields. 

I know this season will fly by. It always does. I'm savoring summer's sweetness while it lasts.

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 28, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Sweet Summer

Summer is my favorite season. I say that about every season in its prime, so don’t mind me in a few months, when the leaves are ablaze in the colors of autumn and the air is perfectly crisp and I claim fall is my favorite, or when winter arrives all white and frosty and magical and I announce it is my preferred season, then months later embrace the reawakening of spring as the best. Right now, my love affair is with summer.

At some point, several years into adulthood, it struck me that although I no longer had that last-day-of school excitement, with summer’s carefree days stretching infinitely into the hazy heat of the season, I still thrilled at the arrival of summer. So ingrained was that feeling of summer freedom that I felt it as the days lengthened and warmed as clearly as I had as a kid, even though my schedule of work and responsibility was the same now in July as it was in November or March.

Maybe that lingering sense of summer freedom is because I have always lived in places where summer – with its warmth and color and long days – is fleeting. Or maybe it’s that I have so many good memories of the season from my childhood – hiking with my family, lazy afternoons of reading in the backyard hammock, time in the garden with my mother, catching fireflies just after dusk, sparklers on the 4^th of July by the backyard campfire, countless hours spent kicking a soccer ball, and one epic cross-country journey with my parents and brothers and a pop-up camper. 

Whatever the reason, now that I have kids who fully embrace the joys of summer – kids old enough to put on their own sunscreen and carry their own backpacks, but still a few years away from summer jobs and the dreaded teenage years of being too hip to hang with Mom – summer has regained that sense of freedom and insouciance.

Here are some of the things I love about summer:

·         Jumping into cool water on a hot day.

·         Reading by the big window in our living room – or on the front porch – after the kids are tucked in, as twilight slowly engulfs the mountains, passing through an impossible array of subtle hues on its way to full dark.

·         The smell of roses: heady and heavenly.

·         The sparkle of a thousand fireflies twinkling across the field, as close to magic as anything I’ve seen.

·         Family soccer games in the front yard.

·         Watching my children fall into books and get lost there for chunks of time – bed time, after breakfast time, by the pool or river time.

·         Clean sheets dried on the clothesline and smelling of sunshine.

·         Color. So much color.

·         Flowers picked from the field and the garden and placed in a simple glass jar on the dining room table.

·         Birdsong, even the annoyingly redundant call of the catbird at dawn.

·         Vegetables gathered from the garden: the succulent result of the tilling and planting and weeding and watering.

·         Trips to the ocean.

·         Bike rides through the woods.

·         Outings with friends and our combined gaggle of children.

·         (Mostly) unrushed mornings – and not having to pack lunches every single day.

·         Thunder echoing through the mountains and the cooling rain which often follows.

·         The games my children imagine together, whether they are pretending to be wild animals (sometimes not much of a stretch) or building a fort in the woods by the river.

·         Running in the quiet and relative coolness of early morning.

·         Fresh, wild berries, found unexpectedly and consumed on the spot – or gathered purposefully and tucked into the freezer for less bountiful days to come.

·         Flip-flops. Or, even better, going barefoot.

·         Campfires and s’mores and late-night laughter.

·         Standing atop a tall mountain with my children, who are still discovering how much they can do, how far they can climb – and who still want me along for the adventure.

There are hitches in all this summer freedom, of course. Often the garden goes unweeded, becoming jungle-like while we are off hiking and splashing in the river. All those house projects I swore I’d tackle this season get pushed, once again, to next season’s to-do list. And my work hours are severely diminished in these weeks when the kids are with me nearly all the time.

When I ask my children, though, what they love most about summer, all three place “spending more time with my family” at the top of the list. Perhaps this will not always be their favorite part of summer; certainly they will outgrow this self-sufficient-yet-still-ingenuous phase, as they have outgrown other childhood phases.

So I am taking advantage of these days when they want to do things, go places, explore and adventure together. Someday, I hope, when they have moved beyond the enchanting freedom of their childhood summers, they will still thrill at the season’s arrival, still embrace the simple joys of summer, still remember all the sweet summer fun we had together. 

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 22, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

A gaggle of cousins

My three young children, a posse on their own, happily expanded their whirlwind to include their California cousins last week for several days of mountain scrambling, river splashing, family dinners, and endless giggling.

Checking out the catch of the day.

The suburbs of Sacramento are a far cry from the country lanes and cool rivers of Franconia, New Hampshire, and the planned slate of White Mountain activities was filled to overflowing before the plane touched down in the Granite State.

In the four summers that my brother, a New Englander both by upbringing and at heart, has been returning “home” with his son, they have developed a few must-do items that are repeated each visit, along with a few new adventures every year.

The week in New Hampshire is a chance for my brother to give his son – and now his two vivacious step-daughters – a glimpse into his own boyhood summers. It is a chance for the kids – all aged 10 and under – to form bonds and explore new things.

The visitors get a taste of mountain living, being able to wander far and wide without the constant buzz of traffic, exploring dense forest right beyond the backyard, watching fireflies and stars in a night sky not obscured by city lights. The kids who live here year-round are inspired to go to some of the places that draw tourists here, but that we don’t think to visit because they’re simply part of the local landscape.

During past summers, we’ve ridden the tramway at Cannon Mountain (normally a winter activity for us, but just as spectacular in the summer), watched the bears perform at Clark’s TradingPost, joined the throngs of small kids and their families at Santa’s Village, and browsed the world’s longest candy counter at Chutters.

This year, as always, we began the week with the short trek to the top of Mount Baldy in Franconia Notch. This is my nephew’s favorite, and we don’t do anything else until we’ve scrambled over the boulders of Baldy to reach the breezy top and check out the view of Lafayette and the Peabody Slopes at Cannon.

From there, we moved on to more fun – and kept right on moving the entire week. We slid down the chutes at Slippery Rock, paddled the waters of Long Pond and Coffin Pond in canoes and kayaks, splashed happily in chilly Echo Lake, and squeezed through tunnels and caves at Lost River.

The kids hunted crayfish, dug in the sand, and watched a bear wander slowly across a ski trail high above the beach at Echo. At Long Pond, a lone loon braved the noisy bunch, floating near the canoe and then diving underwater to reappear in a new place, and every rock turned in the outlet stream revealed a salamander. At Coffin Pond we watched a heron fly over us and a painted turtle slip from a log into the water as we glided near.

Even at home, there was nary a dull moment. Soccer in the yard, searching for toads and inchworms in Nana’s gardens, finding green sticks with Poppy for roasting marshmallows, swinging on the old Peabody chairlift hanging behind the house, impromptu dance parties around the fire pit with Aunt Laura, and back-to-back-to-back evenings of gobbling up s’mores and watching fireflies.

It was everything summer should be, squeezed into a mere six days. As the cousins headed back to the other side of the country this week, we were all sad to say goodbye. Their visit left us a bit tired and filled with happy memories – and a list of things to do next summer. Let the countdown to next year’s cousin reunion begin!