Summer, Sand, and Flowing Water

Summer, Sand, and Flowing Water

By John W. Vander Velden

 

On summer’s hottest day, as sweat covered I trudge under ordinary obligations, I consider the season.    Some find summer unpleasant, but like each time of year it has its moments.  For there are those days when the air feels thick the moment I step out on a morning that is more than warm and a haze hangs in the air, proof of the intense humidity.  But summer is summer should we expect less.

On those intense days I remember the summers of my youth.  And when I think of hot days of the past, my years in central Florida stand out.  Sweltering heat and humidity the watch words of that country.  Often our escape to the cool creek enough to make the time pass as we splashed in the shallow water.  We learned quickly about rattlesnakes and cotton mouths, where they could be likely found and avoided those places.  The sandy space, that, with a bit of my older brother’s engineering became our island, was the center of our games and imagination’s adventures.

Even so we had to cross a marsh to get there, and dangerous things lived in the marsh.  A few scrounged cement blocks and some long boards strategically placed along a woven wire fence formed a makeshift bridge separating us from the ooze and the slithering critters.  Eyes open, always.  Pay attention to everything around you.  We often saw the gaping snow white mouth of the moccasin but never nearby.  Strange it was not the snakes that drove us away from that small piece of paradise.  In our play, we thumped a bee tree.  And as “Poo Bear” will tell you, “you can never tell about bees”.  Whether it was anger or a desire to protect their hoard, I could not say, but they drove us out, most impolitely.

It was weeks before we gathered enough courage to venture back.  Though we discovered our folly the island had lost its appeal, and we found other places, safer places, easier to reach places, at that.  But it is that small bit of an island a sandy place that I remember best.  And when I long to escape the hottest days of summer, sometimes my heart returns there.

(369 Words)  7-27-2017