When I was a child, we didn’t go out to eat very often. We stayed around the house most of the time. I don’t remember ever traveling much until I was an adolescent. I didn’t fly until I was in my twenties and I think I was the first member of my immediate family who ever flew. I remember my father used to work for an airline and he had a bad experience being in an airplane, doing maintenance, when someone pressurized it. The day he took me to the airport for my first flight, he tried to talk me out of going.
When the winter is stretching on, as it is right now, with snow in the forecast, sometimes it makes me think of warmer, and better times. This afternoon, inexplicably, I am thinking of a vacation we took when I was just a boy. It was the first real vacation we ever took as a family, in that we left home and stayed and slept somewhere else for two days. My father had a friend who had a cabin on a lake, set back in a stream-fed cove called Pine Cove. It was only two or three rooms with a screened-in porch that overlooked the lake. There was a dock, floating on pontoons or 55 gallon drums and moored to the shore with braided steel cable. We dove off the dock into the water and swam. One of the neighbors to the cabin had a small boat and he had a granddaughter who rowed us around the cove in the boat. It was a summer recreational cabin and I don’t even remember if it had heat, but it didn’t matter because no one stayed there in the winter. The old neighbor, who had the granddaughter and the boat, however, lived on Pine Cove year round. He told us stories of how he would ice skate to the marina in the winter time to buy food and provisions. Somehow, it seemed to me that would be the idyllic life. I have often thought throughout my adult life that someday I would like to have a house on the lake to live in all year round. I like the idea of sitting in front of the fireplace on cold winter days and watching the snow fall and I like the idea of a slower pace of life.
Most of all, though, I think of the days of July and August and the cool breeze coming off the lake. I think about a ride in the boat and diving off the dock into the cool water and swimming around Pine Cove.
It’s funny, though. When I think back about that vacation-- really think-- I remember that there were rocks on the bottom of the cove and you had to wear tennis shoes to wade into the water, and when you went swimming you‘d stub your toe on the rocks. There was mud between the rocks and it would squish between your toes and felt really slimy, so you’d feel around on the bottom with your toes to find a rock so you could stand on it. I remember there were scorpions-- little ones, black and orange-- and you had to avoid stepping on them so they wouldn’t sting you. I remember I got sunburned so badly I had to wear a white t-shirt the second day so I wouldn’t burn any worse. I also remember the road into Pine Cove was steep and rocky and my father had trouble driving in and out to and from the cabin.
The two days we stayed at Pine Cove, my father was never able to relax, for some reason. It was as if he were away from home and wanted to get back and the second day we all began to get uncomfortable, as if we were someplace where we shouldn’t be. So we went home that next day.
When I was a teen-ager, my Father got a camper for his truck and he and mom spent a lot of time on the road. Dad finally felt comfortable traveling. We kids have flown frequently since reaching adulthood, and we are comfortable traveling. After dad died, mom started flying occasionally and up until a couple of years ago she would hop on a plane to Florida or Vegas at the drop of a hat. Our journeys all started that summer at Pine Cove. I sort of consider Pine Cove to be the beginning of a journey that is not over. I’d like to think I’m just in the middle of it. Pine Cove wasn’t a destination as much as the first step of a long journey.
But like I said, sometimes in the middle of winter, one needs something beside the dormant grass and leafless trees to think about. And, although the snow is pretty, it just reinforces the winter chill.
So, lets all think of a better place, a warmer place, and a time when things seemed simpler. I’m sure you have a summer memory or two, and a place when and where the days were warm and long and bright and the night breezes reminded you that you were alive. Close your eyes and think of your summer place. Think about it and a few more minutes of winter will be gone. As for me, Pine Cove is as good a place as any and I think I‘ll give it the next couple of minutes of my life.
Because in Jimbo’s world we like to savor each and every minute.
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