On Chazy Beach

It's Thursday morning and I'm out on the beach, gazing out over Lake Champlain, just a few steps across the lawn from our cabin. I could bug Mom to figure out the precise number of years we've been coming here and, more specifically, how many years I've actually made it, but to do so would mean leaving the beach and this brilliant sunrise that keeps pulling my eyes from the screen.

Whatever the actual tally it feels as though I always spend the annual week in Chazy thinking about what has changed and what never changes. As familiar as I find the seeking, biting cold of the lake water or the quiet obsession we all get with the jigsaw puzzles, I find myself just as surprised to see the bloated bag of cans we produce now that all the boys can drink and the diligence with which Colin and Sean have studied for their CPA exams. In fact, I'll need to pack up on the beach here soon and take this show to Conroy's Organics, where Colin and I spent two hours working yesterday.

As comforting as it is to take up my net after missing two years, either the fish are too fast or I'm too slow and I've watched a few ghostly sheepsheads dart away while my breath bubbles a roared curse back up to the surface. Still, there are a few days left and I will get one of the bastards if I have to hunt on Saturday before we leave. The hunt still soothes, though, with the chill of the lake and the focus on movement wiping every other thought from my mind. I think its effect on my healing meniscus may be a wash though; whatever bonus the cold water brings may be undone by several unbroken minutes trying to keep up with whatever fish I've got in target lock.

Thankfully, this moment is familiar. My alarm woke me quietly, I hope, not disturbing my three cousins in the room we all still insist on sleeping in together despite being men grown. I dressed, creaked down the narrow staircase to the single great room of the ground floor, and slipped on my flipflops while peering through the wall of windows to see that the sky already glowed pink. Then came the dewy walk through the same lawn we'd taken to just seven hours before to crane up our necks and guess at the stars (or cheat with iPhone apps). Finally, the ever-changing stony stairs down to the beach, which is actually long rock slabs scattered with plastic Adirondack chairs. I rescued a few the wind had carried off down the shore and plopped myself down in one, setting my eyes over Isle la Motte where the sun soon came glowing through the trees.

While I was working, there were times that I chafed at this trip. When you're in your twenties and have a set allotment of vacation, it can be hard to prioritize a trip so familiar when there are so many new things in the world to see. But now, tagged and released into the wild as a creative experiment, I find myself sharing my Uncle Kevin's tradition of feeling the end of the trip days before it happens. There are two more sunrises, two more days, probably less than ten expeditions into the lake. And while I'm lucky enough, when I leave, to follow the sunsets into the West on my way to Lake Tahoe, I will still miss starting the day alone with the sunrise and closing it out sitting in plastic Adirondack chairs with laughter, canned IPAs, and our feet in the water.



But now, it's time to wake up Col and get to work.