This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer who lives in North Calais.
Between the deer flies and humidity, my level of self-pity reaches astounding heights until I focus, unfocus and refocus, finally breathing deeply, the air so thick it feels like I need to chew it awhile before inhaling.
It’s just after 8 a.m. on an already hazy Sunday. Judging by cars along the road the camps surrounding the pond are filled to the rafters but it’s still quiet with no discernible activity. The quickly warming sunshine breaking through is a clear indication that water — it in us, or us in it — will play a significant role in how pleasurable the rest of the day evolves.
I’ve become so attuned to the flies I can feel them landing on me through my hat and clothing, even when they’re not. My hyper-vigilance finds me percussively cuffing myself over the head as I walk down the road, glad most weekenders (potential witnesses) are apparently sleeping in this morning.
Of course, if they’ve got a camp out here, chances are they know exactly what I’m doing. Living by the bug is what we do. Realistically, the annoyance is a pretty small price to pay for the luxury of not living anywhere else.
Enhanced perhaps by a dew point more likely found in a Louisiana swamp, smells seem more prevalent and easier to identify: Someone’s up early, smoking the day’s first cigarette; there’s coffee brewing in one camp; bacon’s on the breakfast menu in another. There’s the acrid odor of a smoldering bonfire and the distinct incense of the evening fireworks that extend Fourth of July all the way to Labor Day each summer weekend.
All this marinates with the perfume of wildflowers billowing along the wilder portions of the road and the subtle yet unmistakable smell of the water — a clean, fresh distillation of sunshine, oxygen and life.
As I find myself gravitating toward the shade even at this early hour, I’m grateful for the trees providing a canopy for much of the route, but the vital role they play extends well beyond my personal comfort level. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, shade trees can reduce the temperature of a specific area an astounding 20 to 40 degrees through a process called evapotranspiration, which launches water into the atmosphere through the transpiration — or “exhalation” — of plants.
Increasingly important in city environments as climate change accelerates warming, vegetation planted in strategic locations around buildings or shading paved parking areas mitigates the effects of heat, decreasing the demand for air conditioning, ironically one of the worst producers of greenhouse gases contributing to air pollution and the global climate crisis. Efforts to combat rising temperatures have included a nationwide surge of tree planting, the expansion of greenways and the construction of new parks.
As the temperature ticks up, nudging my dwindling tolerance, the realization that I don’t need a park because I pretty much live in a park leaves no avenue for complaint. In fact, It’s hard to imagine living anywhere else, especially now. After 40-plus years, I’m habituated. This is where I belong. It’s the perfect place.
Having said that, I realize that, like anywhere else, living 5 miles out on a back road requires more compromises than are perceptible on a warm summer morning. Five months from now is another story.
I pass a wetland with a half-mile swath of white water lilies shimmering in the light, dragonflies patrolling the air above and a chorus of on-the-make bullfrogs stalking the cattails. This sweeping panorama I decide would launch Monet into paroxysms of enchantment as the expressionist set up his easel on the side of the road, anxious to capture the beauty of this tiny valley. I wonder if, in his plein air excursions, he’d ever encountered the kind of deer flies that now encircled my head like electrons and how flailing arms might have transformed his art.
The farther I walk, the deeper I settle into a familiar kind of reverie, recalling childhood summers lasting forever, even as the first portents of the season’s brevity tentatively begin a timeless ritual with a leaf or two at first, teasing autumn’s eventual fiery crescendo awaiting down the road.
It’s a reminder for those of us of a certain age to drag our feet a little and reflect on youthful summers when June bulged with promise and September was off in the distance, as improbable as walking on the moon.
Later in the afternoon, I’m bobbing in another of the several ponds along our road, not swimming so much as just being there, barely twitching my fins to stay afloat, a phenomenon that finds me nearly alone in 40 acres of water, save the solitary loon I’ve been calling “The Bachelor” the past several years. Little is known of nonbreeding loons such as he, whose arrival each summer without a mate raises questions: Have they established a territory, defending nesting or feeding areas? Are they scouting surrounding waters in the market for a girlfriend? Or are they just as happy spending life alone?
My curiosities are more humanly pedestrian. As he surfaces not far away, beak clamped on his wriggling dinner, flashing silver in the late afternoon sunshine, I wonder if he’s content; if he feels loneliness; and how his instincts work. Has he begun preparing for his annual commute and where does he spend the winter? Is his timetable set by late summer’s subtly waning daylight or are his senses sharpened by the same few rusting leaves along the shore that place my walks into seasonal context.
As I head for shore, my body temperature is lowered enough to ward off the day’s heat, thanks to the cool water. One more glance at the loon, a silhouette off the far shore as the sun dips below the distant hillside. My toes find the sand as that intoxicating fresh-water smell hits me one more time.
I breathe deeply and notice the water lilies have closed up for the night after a near-perfect summer day.