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diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index edf8119..6e3fdd0 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -576,46 +576,42 @@ People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun. # Stories to Tell ## Lemon Lyme Summer -The sun rises a thin band of orange squeezed between twin blue worlds of lake and cloud. The tips of the pines above glow for a moment before the sun slides up and behind the distant clouds. It rises near the center of the bay when we arrive in April. +The sun rises as a thin band of orange squeezed between twin blue worlds of lake and cloud. The tips of the pines above glow for a moment before the sun slides up and behind the distant clouds. <img src="images/2024/2024-07-23-05-38-14_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4010" class="picwide" /> -By Solstice it's no longer rising over the lake at all, but far north, from some spot obscured from view by land and trees. There it rises all summer. +The sun rises near the center of the bay when we arrive in April, but by the solstice it's no longer rising over the lake at all, but far to the north, from some spot obscured by trees. There it rises most of the summer. -It is never truly hot here. Not in the sense that it gets hot in the rest of the country. But it feels hot sometime to us. The midday the light cuts through the evergreens bright and yellow, sluggish, the haze of humidity weighing it down. Ashland, a mere four miles across the bay, is sometimes lost in the haze. Thankfully the lake is always there, always cool, often cold, even on the hottest days. +Summer on the shores of Lake Superior is difficult to put in words. It's idyllic. It's never that hot here. Not in the sense that it gets hot in the rest of the country. It's often [warmer in Florida in April](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2023/05/goodbye-florida) than it is up here in July. But temperature is always relative, and come July we're just like the people I [once laughed at](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/07/crystal-lake), calling a 85 degree day here "hot." + +The midday the light burns through the evergreens, a sluggish heat hangs in the air, the haze of humidity weighing it down. Ashland, a mere four miles across the bay, gets lost in the watery blur of the horizon. Thankfully the lake is always there, always cool, usually cold, even on the hottest days. + +It's more than the weather though. There is something about summer up here that feels more like the world of my youth than anywhere else we've been in the U.S. It's one of the few places we've been where the kids can wander the woods, follow the creeks, ride their bikes around town, make food over a fire, fish, swim, and whatever else they want to do, on their own. <img src="images/2024/2024-06-01_155658_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3990" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2024/2024-06-04_134040_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3991" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2024/2024-07-27_144831_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4003" class="picwide" /> -The girls' birthday marks what I think of the real beginning of summer up here. This is around the time it get "hot" with days above 80 and the lake water in the shallows of Chequamegon Bay get into the low 60s, which feels like bathwater after swimming in May and June. - -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-11_064556_12th-birthday.jpg" id="image-4001" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-11_064305_12th-birthday.jpg" id="image-4000" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-07-12_065415_12th-birthday.jpg" id="image-4002" class="picwide" /> - -Our summers in the north seem to get every busier. Despite my best determination not to be hurried, we lived between baseball and juijitsu, acting camp and sailing camp. This year the girls were invited to teach sailing for the younger kids, so that one stretched out even more. When I type it out it doesn't sound like much. Maybe it isn't. Busy is relative. Our busy is sedate next to what some of my parenting friends describe. +Despite my best [determination not to be hurried](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2023/11/dunes), we spend May and June living between baseball and juijitsu, acting camp and sailing camp. This year the girls were invited to teach sailing for the younger kids, so that stretched out even more. When I type it out it doesn't sound like much. Maybe it isn't. Busy is like the temperature, relative. <img src="images/2024/2024-06-13_181015_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3993" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2024/2024-08-23_112419_sailing.jpg" id="image-4007" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2024/2024-08-23_112742_sailing.jpg" id="image-4008" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2024/2024-06-07_125848_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3992" class="picwide" /> -I had a number of projects I wanted to get done this summer, which made it feel busier than usual. These projects were largely physical, building things. Toward the end of July I found that my joints were hurting more than they should, even with the abuse of lifting heavy sheets of plywood and spending 6 hours a week on the mats. I honestly would never have thought anything about it, except that I mentioned it one day and my wife pointed out that that is a symptom of Lyme disease, and I'd had a tick in me about two weeks before. - -If you do any research on Lyme you'll quickly enter a minefield of conflicting information. Luckily for me, a good friend of ours was a nurse in the area, and has had Lyme, so she suggested I go to a Lyme-specific clinic about two hours away. I made an appointment for a week later, but in the mean time, Lyme began to eat away at me. And I mean that literally. You can feel it inside you, in your joints, in your head. The only other thing I've ever had that was like was Covid. Coincidentally there is some pretty good evidence Lyme is another bioweapons accident. Make of that what you will. - -Whatever its origins, half the problem with Lyme is finding a doctor who understands it. Fortunately I did and I got the prescriptions I needed (antibiotics along with a slew of supplements). If you've got Lyme and you're anywhere near the Tick-Borne Illness Center in Woodruff, Wisconsin, just go. Unfortunately you'll have to pay out of pocket. The tick center does not follow the CDC's guidelines (which will leave you with Lyme for a lifetime) and therefore most insurance won't cover it. - -I'm still not 100 percent. Maybe I never will be again. I do feel much better and have been able to get back to juijitsu and physical labor, which I'm thankful for, though my joints continue to hurt and swell up at times. +The girls' birthday marks what I think of the real beginning of summer up here. This is around the time it get "hot" with days above 80 and the lake water in the shallows of Chequamegon Bay gets into the low 60s, which feels like bathwater after swimming in May and June. +<img src="images/2024/2024-07-11_064556_12th-birthday.jpg" id="image-4001" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2024/2024-07-11_064305_12th-birthday.jpg" id="image-4000" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2024/2024-07-12_065415_12th-birthday.jpg" id="image-4002" class="picwide" /> +I had a number of projects I wanted to get done this summer, which made it feel busier than usual. These projects were largely physical, building things. Toward the end of July I found that my joints were hurting more than they should, even with the abuse of lifting heavy sheets of plywood and spending 6 hours a week on the mats. I honestly would never have thought anything about it, except that I mentioned it one day and my wife pointed out that that is a symptom of Lyme disease, and I'd had a tick in me about two weeks before. +If you do any research on Lyme you'll quickly enter a minefield of conflicting information. Luckily for me, a good friend of ours was a nurse in the area, and has had Lyme, so she suggested I go to a Lyme-specific clinic about two hours away. I made an appointment for a week later, but in the mean time, Lyme began to eat away at me. And I mean that literally. You can feel it inside you, in your joints, in your head. The only other thing I've ever had that was like was Covid. Coincidentally there is some pretty good evidence Lyme is another bioweapons accident. Make of that what you will. -August rolls around, air thick and still, before the sun begins again to rise over the water. Orange and blue mornings return. I look forward to the middle of August, when things settle down. This year we had a string of warm weeks around then, almost no rain and temps in the 80s. We spent most of our time in the lake, on the paddle boards, with the occasional break hike or to pick berries. +Whatever its origins, half the problem with Lyme is finding a doctor who understands it. Fortunately I did and I got the prescriptions I needed (antibiotics along with a slew of supplements). If you've got Lyme and you're anywhere near the [Tick-Borne Illness Center](https://www.aspirus.org/find-a-location/aspirus-tickborne-illness-center-552) in Woodruff, Wisconsin, just go. Unfortunately you'll have to pay out of pocket. The tick center does not follow the CDC's guidelines (which will leave you with Lyme for a lifetime) and therefore most insurance won't cover it. -<img src="images/2024/2024-08-21_145028_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4006" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2024/2024-08-08_182047_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4004" class="picwide" /> +I'm still not 100 percent. Maybe I never will be again. I do feel much better and have been able to get back to juijitsu and physical labor, which I'm thankful for, though my joints continue to hurt and swell up at times. <div class="cluster"> <img src="images/2024/2024-07-03_111503_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-3996" class="picwide" /> @@ -625,6 +621,11 @@ August rolls around, air thick and still, before the sun begins again to rise ov </span> </div> +August rolls around, air thick and still, before the sun begins again to rise over the water. Orange and blue mornings return. I look forward to the middle of August, when things settle down. This year we had a string of warm weeks around then, almost no rain and temps in the 80s. We spent most of our time in the lake, on the paddle boards, with the occasional break to hike or pick berries. + +<img src="images/2024/2024-08-21_145028_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4006" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2024/2024-08-08_182047_around-washburn.jpg" id="image-4004" class="picwide" /> + but the light is changed. Autumn is a quality of light, a taste in the air. Something new is added. The world is clearer, the edges sharper, it feels like around the corner, all will be revealed. The earth is brilliantly alive. You can taste it. If I could live in perpetual Autumn I would, for a while at least. |