Spring day at camp

When we had a couple days of sunny weather last week, I drove up to camp with my parents. Their camp is just about a hundred miles north, a peninsula of oak trees set in a marsh on the Big River That Runs Between Two Countries.

Usually camp is in the deep shade of oak trees so it’s funny to be there in early spring when the trees are still bare. The sun shone down on the picnic tables, the firepit, the outhouse, and the empty dock. The trilliums, those lovely spring wildflowers, were still in bloom, growing in clumps amidst the dead oak leaves.

We took out one of the canoes — with my father in the bow, my mother sitting in the middle, and me at the stern — and paddled about the bay. The summer camps we passed were still boarded up for the winter. When I reached my hand into the water, it was icy cold. But the sun, beating down on our bare heads, felt warm. Summer will be here soon.