Summer Break: Week Twelve

The ending of Summer Break 2017, was bittersweet. Summer Break is never long enough. There's never quite enough time to fit in that one last lazy day by the river or at the beach, or even just sitting in an easy chair in the front yard. I always want just one more.

But it was a good Summer. There were honeybees and fresh berries and a somewhat-happy growing garden. It was hotter and drier than usual, which the green beans and squash loved but my beloved kale and potatoes hated.

The kids grew. We laughed together. We plotted and schemed for our upcoming Disney trip.

The final closing weekend will always be marked in our memories sadly though.

Not for the amazing Kaleo concert at the Oregon Zoo, or for blackberry crisp with homemade ice cream. Not for the first batch of homemade salsa from our greenhouse jungle.

It will instead be remembered as the year the Columbia River Gorge caught fire and burned. So many beautiful trees gone forever. So many trails and foot bridges to be re-built. We're thankful that the fires did not reach us; we are a good 15 miles away as the crow flies. But every day, our air was full of some of the thickest smoke we've experienced. We breathed the death of trees into our lungs, and daily remembered a different favorite place, wondering if it remained.

Clouds

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

First and last stanzas from The Cloud, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.