Summertime Summertime Sum Sum Summertime

        It’s been weeks.
        I realize I’ve been negligent with my passion and less than active with my conduit of liberty and expression, but heck, who has the time? Fret not, my mind is still that fervent river lashing against the levees of society, but alas, it is summer in this high altitude town, and that obliges we fill our days with all activities al fresco. I find myself weakened by the warmth….the greenery….the fact that I don’t have to wear a wool hat or Sorels (God, I love flip flops)….and I abandon anything interior in exchange. (You should see the state of my house…but who cares….’cause I’m not in it!)

         Only those that live in a climate with 10 months of winter would understand my compulsion to spend all possible hours in open-air with friends and family. The pressure - I mean novelty - (did I say ‘pressure’?) of summer never has a chance to wear off here. Life is still funny and worthy of humorous blogging, to be sure, but again, who has the time? And Jackson Hole in the summer? Hilarious. I never thought I’d get such a chuckle out of observing tourists lined up alongside the road, pining for a glimpse of a mangy moose stripping some poor homeowner’s trees, or an osprey on top of a bloody telephone pole, or a field of cows (cows for god’s sake).  And boy how I laughed at the circumstances of our annual, self-induced laborious 4^th of July camping trip, which took days to plan and prepare for, but was ultimately 3 days of sitting on a pile of dirt and mud. There were some comical moments in those few days – or they seem funny now anyway. Who knew fireworks were that powerful…..?

         So, we can’t grow tomatoes here and we never put our down jackets away, because even though it’s summer, it still gets chilly at night….(when we’re determined to be outside eating our dinner that has gone cold), but we sure know how to make the best of any day above 30 degrees. We are a hearty and committed people. We will endure ridiculous tourists and bison jams to ensure we pack a year's worth of summer activities into 8 weeks. And we will prevail. By autumn, we will have survived it all, including the County Fair where perilous contraptions called ‘rides’ are assembled in 3 hours, after being pulled into town on flatbed trucks by people that look like a cross between nursing home residents and prison inmates. There is an entire novel of material right there.

         “So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be”. Lordy, lordy, Lord Tennyson, how right you were. I don’t have time to just sit on my bum and peck on the keyboard right now. There are only 32 days until school starts however, and by then, I will have accumulated long lists of situations that can be shared during my kid-free days. By then, I will be ready to come inside, make my bed, wear shoes and compose. By then…..I will have mastered the role of swim cap assistant, and perfected stuffing waist-long hair into a too tight, flimsy and shapeless vinyl topper, with nary a foul word or chiding from my daughter….. (♫ Some people call me a dreamer….la-la-la la-la-la laaaaa…♫…)

        Imagine.