It’s early morning and the house is stuffy from windows closed against the threat of rain. Breakfast is done. Bring your coffee, or tea, and come with me.
Leave your slippers behind. It’s barefoot season after all.
Come with me through the sliding doors and out to the deck. The boards are cool under your soles, slightly damp from the heavy dew. Descend the stairs to the bare rocks, even cooler in the dense shade cast by scrub oak and white birch. Along the path, the tall grasses tickle your shins.
Come with me into the sunlight and have a seat on granite already warm from the touch of the sun. Yes, sit on the bare rock, feel it against the backs of your bare legs, brush your fingertips over pale grey-green lichens. Pick a wild blueberry, small and pungent, the taste of cottage country.
Follow the swoop and sploosh of a tern fishing for her breakfast. She mewls to her mate. There’s food here. A loon laughs in the next bay over. Behind you, a chipmunk rattles through the dry leaves on the forest floor.
Lift your gaze to the far shore where rocks and trees are blurred and dwarfed by distance. Lift your gaze to the misty horizon indistinguishable from the blue waters of the bay. Lift your gaze to clouds that play with the sun trying to kiss your shoulders.
Inhale deeply. So deeply that your eyes close, your head tips back, your soul memorizes the scent of sweet tarry pine, of deep living water, and peace.
© Joan Leacott, 2013
I’m so there!
Don’t forget a sunhat!