The Anecdotal Life Part. 64

This may be a mumbling along to myself blog, but for a while I had it all. Everyday while I was at the cottage, the air, the water, and fields were clean beyond anything you can possibly envision. Privately, we call it the Caribbean of the North and we are right to do so. Except for one 89 degree day, the temperatures for three weeks were cool during the day, and chilly at night. Made for some good reading. The sky was a standout this year. Some time had been spent by the cosmos decorating that vivid blue. Everything sparkled. Riveting cloud formations held my attention aloft so much I was lucky I didn't fall on my face. Georgia O'keefe would have loved the little identical puffballs littering the horizon. I thought of Albert Enstein's purported ability to mix stripes with plaids when I saw some strange combinations of sweeping cirrus and thundering cumulo-nimbus . It was a though "the planner" didn't know what kind of a day to make it.
Now I'm home, unpacking and unpacking all my "stuff". How does it double in volume? I had gotten rid of a gazebo and inflatable boat, my sister and her stuff( no offense Peg) and it still took me a week. The weather in Annapolis is not nice. Hot, muggy and our rating as having the fifth, dirtiest air quality in the nation is totally on display. When you can see the air dropping like a dirty isinglass curtain before your eyes, you need to leave town. Instead I came back. (Hmmmm) The waters of the once proud Chesapeake are killing the fish and certain areas contain dead zones with zero oxygen. I think longingly of the northern marinas I visited. It would cost four thousand and up to get my boat there.
It affects me directly when I go back to see my boat covered in a beardlike murk from the waterline down, like some homeless person who has no access to a shower or bath. I had to haul up the hose which had been disconnected and left dangling during my absence, and empty the gunk from it before I dared run water through the boat's systems. More than that, I need to move to a new marina where the boat can be in deeper water and avoid some of the trouble, but if you wonder about the bottom of the bay, I dare you to walk out in it. I was getting sick to my stomach just wiping down the hose. It is then that Crystal Lake, Michigan's " see all the way to the bottom" reputation for good visibility, even in twenty to thirty foot depths, comes to mind most graphically, underscoring the difference between the two bodies of water. Well, as they say, "if wishes were horses, I'd have a ranch."

Copyright: August 5, 2007.