Fishing For Answers
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu! -- Traditional
Summer is here.
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu! -- Traditional
Summer is here.
We had, I think, an uncommonly mild May, but the heat is definitely coming on. High 80s to low 90s this week, with humidity. We won’t see another cool stretch until October maybe, or beyond.
It is funny how, like so many other things, the seasons mean different things depending what stage one’s life is in. As a little kid, I loved summer for the most basic reason – no school. Freedom. Good times. As a teenager and beyond, it was something the same, but a little more complicated. The beach, women, drinking, etc., were what I looked forward to then. I was in great shape in those years, and unless I was at work or church or somewhere, you could normally find me in my standard summer attire, a pair of OP canvas shorts and flip-flops. Shades. No shirt, and a good tan.
Now I view the arrival of summer with a bit more ambivalence. I’ve grown less accustomed to the heat, living my grown up air-conditioned existence. When I do get out in it, wow, it is HOT. Other than family vacations, which won’t be going on too much longer, and an occasional surf fishing foray to the coast, summer doesn’t hold as much appeal for me as it used to.
And that is wrong. I was talking to my 16-year-old yesterday, and he commented how he needed to get down to the beach this weekend, his friends had been going and said Bolivar was still trashed but improving. That struck a chord with me – I remember how fired up I used to get starting about mid-week, because I knew if it wasn’t raining I’d be down at Crystal Beach either Saturday or Sunday or both, my buddy Rocky and I oiled up, a full cooler and a lawn chairs, listening to music, watching the women walk by, talking to some of them, the ones we could get to stop for a moment; and several thousand other people all around, just like us.
I could see that gleam in my son’s eye, and I suddenly realized how much I’d lost, how maybe I had conceded too much to time and being a responsible grownup. I resolved to make it down to Bolivar this summer at least twice a month, to surf fish/sit in my chair and drink beer and meditate, while staring at the horizon and listening to the waves as they ease into the shoreline and break.
This is my summer resolution, my promise to myself, and I am going to keep it. I get a feeling of calm and peace and ease, realizing I am seriously going to reconnect to the place from whence I came which, depending on who you talk to, is either the ocean itself, when my great-great-great-great. . . well, you get the idea – my great-granddaddy flopped up on to shore on his side, and suddenly realized he could breathe air and all, or the mother’s womb, which the sound of the waves is supposed to approximate. Either way, whether I’m descended from trout, or a from couple of people made of wet dirt wandering around a garden with no clothes on – I’m thinking some of both – the beach is definitely the place I need to be this summer.
Meantime, it is getting a little close in here, let me go crank up the air conditioner.
********
It is funny how, like so many other things, the seasons mean different things depending what stage one’s life is in. As a little kid, I loved summer for the most basic reason – no school. Freedom. Good times. As a teenager and beyond, it was something the same, but a little more complicated. The beach, women, drinking, etc., were what I looked forward to then. I was in great shape in those years, and unless I was at work or church or somewhere, you could normally find me in my standard summer attire, a pair of OP canvas shorts and flip-flops. Shades. No shirt, and a good tan.
Now I view the arrival of summer with a bit more ambivalence. I’ve grown less accustomed to the heat, living my grown up air-conditioned existence. When I do get out in it, wow, it is HOT. Other than family vacations, which won’t be going on too much longer, and an occasional surf fishing foray to the coast, summer doesn’t hold as much appeal for me as it used to.
And that is wrong. I was talking to my 16-year-old yesterday, and he commented how he needed to get down to the beach this weekend, his friends had been going and said Bolivar was still trashed but improving. That struck a chord with me – I remember how fired up I used to get starting about mid-week, because I knew if it wasn’t raining I’d be down at Crystal Beach either Saturday or Sunday or both, my buddy Rocky and I oiled up, a full cooler and a lawn chairs, listening to music, watching the women walk by, talking to some of them, the ones we could get to stop for a moment; and several thousand other people all around, just like us.
I could see that gleam in my son’s eye, and I suddenly realized how much I’d lost, how maybe I had conceded too much to time and being a responsible grownup. I resolved to make it down to Bolivar this summer at least twice a month, to surf fish/sit in my chair and drink beer and meditate, while staring at the horizon and listening to the waves as they ease into the shoreline and break.
This is my summer resolution, my promise to myself, and I am going to keep it. I get a feeling of calm and peace and ease, realizing I am seriously going to reconnect to the place from whence I came which, depending on who you talk to, is either the ocean itself, when my great-great-great-great. . . well, you get the idea – my great-granddaddy flopped up on to shore on his side, and suddenly realized he could breathe air and all, or the mother’s womb, which the sound of the waves is supposed to approximate. Either way, whether I’m descended from trout, or a from couple of people made of wet dirt wandering around a garden with no clothes on – I’m thinking some of both – the beach is definitely the place I need to be this summer.
Meantime, it is getting a little close in here, let me go crank up the air conditioner.
********
