Summer Idyll

Summer in Montana is such an idyll. With rivers to float and lakes to paddle and creeks in which to soak, we seem to build our days around which body of water we plan to jump in. The boys are finally old enough to take up Missoula's number one summer recreation: the float. This involves innertubes, some sunblock, and a long, lazy stretch of river. We drop in, float for several hours as the river winds us between tossing cottonwoods and willow brakes. The osprey wing overhead. The swallows dip and dive. In a few hours, when the river has carried us far enough, we get out, pack up the tubes, and get ready to do it all again. Soon.

Our garden is in and making good progress this year. The poppies were a riot of red for a solid month. When they had finally run their course, I immediately began missing them. There are few things so dependably and deeply cheering. Now the Shasta daisies are blooming and the rudbekia is filling in. The bees are heavy in the lavender and Corin just plants himself beside the lavender patch and watches them at work. Tim, the vegetable garden warden, warns me zuchinni are heavily forecasted for later in the week.

The boys and I joined some friends camping last week. We had our cars packed with tents and sleeping bags and swimming gear and sand pails and sleeping mats and marshmallows and tea pots - just the sort of camping I disdained and vowed never to do before I became a parent. It was a great trip. We plucked a few huckleberries, jumped in the lake, made s'mores. When the boys went to sleep, dropping off easily beneath the tent flaps, I sat and watched the sky, the stars bright and blinking between dark-boughed ponderosas.

And so the days drift by. I keep thinking I'm sure to hear R. Frost's oven bird one of these days, calling its mid-summer song ("the question that he frames in all but words/ is what to make of a diminished thing?"). But I guess my answer to summer's impending end is to jump in the creek, float the rivers, pick raspberries, roast marshmallows, take a picnic up a mountainside, kick back in the grass under the blue blue big sky.