Camping Time

It is almost time to go camping. The bushes have buds, the pussy willows are soft, the crocuses are showing their colorful blooms and the forsythia outside my window is mimicking the daffodils.

The light is returning. I see pink clouds on our morning walks, and the evening moon doesn’t show herself until after dinner. Today, it was sunny and the lake was very blue.

It may have smelled of snow this morning, as we walked in the sleet, but Stevie has been eating new grass along the pathways. He pulls the blades from between the emerging dandelion greens, still tender in their newness. Once the cold night has disappeared, the earth smells are pungent with dead leaf, earthworm, rich loam smells.

The birdsong is more varied. The wind certainly blows, but it no longer howls around the eaves.

It has been a warm winter, but I crave the heat of August. The sun on my face is more than a benediction; it is hope and life itself.

I’ve been craving the sweet tanginess of lemonade, and the sour delight of cold grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed. Strawberries beckon me, but I won’t buy them until they’re locally grown.

A milkshake sounds really good about now.

It is time to get out of the city for a while. I want wild Wyoming landscapes, star-blessed wilderness nights and windy hilltops above a panorama as large as the sky itself.

I want the wind fresh from the Strait and fish smells, salt-water odors and clean-smelling mist in my nose. I want firm sand under my feet as I dodge the waves and the ice-cold froth of a Pacific tide.

I want to hear gulls shrieking through the fog and light rain pattering on the roof of my truck. I want to watch the sun come out and sparkle silver on the rolling waves. I want to go to sleep where the surf rolls through my dreams. I want to wake with the sun glowing red through my closed eyelids.

I want to pack up the truck and travel through mountain passes where the kinnikinnick peeks through the snow. I want to walk pine-needled lanes surrounded by shaded, quiet woods. I want to watch waterfalls tumble from the granite mountainsides, and fantasize about how cold and sweet that water would have tasted fifty years ago from a mountain spring.

My wanderlust is back. It is time to go camping.