Once More to the Lake
We’re in the middle of a heat wave. What can be worse than a heat wave? A dome of heat and humidity hovering over a concrete city. That’s why at this time of year we all dream about going away. We all have fantasies based upon experiences we had as kids of what a true summer is: *Lolling about on a hammock *All day reading on the cot set up on the screened-in porch *A glass of lemonade, condensation sweating down the sides in rivulets *Running through a sprinkler—an act so sublime that it has been lost forever I’m afraid to the Water Park *In a canoe out in the middle of a lake, the cool breezes wafting over you *how about a peach, a bucket of blueberries, shucking corn, cranking ice cream *doing nothing, nothing at all In 1941 E. B. White (he of Charlotte’s Web fame) wrote a small personal essay about returning with his young son to a camp on a lake up in Maine that he had visited during the summer months as a child. The lake had never been what you would call a wild lake. There...