On our annual trip to the mountains, my father pointed out
places he remembered from the 1950s, when he worked at mountain resorts as a
musician every summer. The resorts
were always on lakes; every winding road we took led us to yet another
beautiful lake.
We stayed Friday night in an old inn owned and operated by a
couple who live right next door with their small children. We ate dinner by a
window that overlooked the lake, with the sky getting dark as we ate. After
dinner, we pulled comfy chair up to the fire that crackled in the old stone
fireplace. My father entertained the owners with stories about his days in the
mountains as a musician while I found the guestbook and read aloud some of the
entries.
On Saturday, we hiked around a lake where my husband and I
camped when our kids were little. “See that island in the middle?” I told my
parents. “We canoed out there so the kids could climb up and jump off the rock.
That was a very big deal for the kids.”
Each year our pilgrimage includes a stop at Kindergarten
Friend’s summer home. Usually, the place is closed so we just walk on the lawn
and dock, with me telling stories about the times I visited as a kid, more than
forty years ago. This year, we were greeted warmly at the door by Kindergarten
Friend, her mother, her husband, her two kids, and three little dogs who yipped
and barked at our heels. They’d come up for the weekend.
It was raining outside by then, but the main room has high
ceilings and huge windows, so the place was filled with light. “You can see the
lake from here,” my father said admiringly. He and my mother hadn’t been inside
the vacation home before, so Kindergarten Friend gave them a tour, with me
tagging along to point out cool stuff, like the wood carvings she had done on
the newel post. We’ve been friends so long that I feel like I can take credit
for how creative she is.
We drove home along a road that followed the south shore of
a lake. “We used to come here in the middle of the night, after we got off the
stand,” my father said. “You’d see whole herds of deer sometimes.” Some of the
trees were already bare, but the beech trees glowed orange and gold against the
dark green conifers as we followed the winding road, making our way home.
4 comments:
Sounds like a lovely trip!
Soothing colors...
...the leaves are peaking up in the mountains by us.
just love this. especially your parents and you visiting with K friend.
Ah, my family used to vacation in the Adirondacks when I was young - on Fish Creek Pond, between Tupper Lake and Saranac Lake. Lovely country, wish I had an excuse to go back there.
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