My Little Golden Book of Phobias

I leave for California in a few days. Maya and Tracy, old friends from junior high, cooked up a plan to meet and camp out in the summer every year so now it's an institution. This year we're going to Mt Lassen to stay in someone's vacation home, a client of Maya's who has offered. Sound so grand, no tents or thermarests or cooking over the folding cook stove for us this year. Last year we camped along the Deschutes River where it empties into the Columbia. High winds, strong current (to sweep children away), hot hot sun, a train trestle with hourly trains and coyotes at night kicking up a racket. We were pioneers, adventurers, kid wranglers and lifeguards.

This time I expect we'll be lounging by the pool, sipping martinis and applying sun screen for each other. Not roughing it.

I guess I'll get out to the yard and begin moving more heavy cinderblocks. I think about the person(s) who put them there in the first place. Did they think they were beautiful? Were they holding back the wilderness? Some kind of overkill on the weeds? This is an esthetic I don't understand.

Oh, the split rail fence between me and the greenbelt fell down. Really improves the view. I think I'll just push it over the cliff. It'll end up down there with all the dog bones I throw over. A midden.

I swam in the lake yesterday for the first time this year. It was absolute heaven, the cold and the waves and a view of the the mountain from the water. An eagle flew overhead. The water weeds aren't so high you run into them. That happens in August. Don't be afraid. Just swim out until the water's deeper.