Feeling inexplicably anxious today. Could be that in the course of a week it has gone from 50 degrees back down to 10 again. And why is it that 50 degrees feels so much warmer in February and March than it does in October? It’s something about the blood, right?

So I’m thinking of summer on the lake, going out on a boat in the evening when it is calm. The way you can hear voices carry from across the water.

Today I am thinking of home. The woods, the mountains, and the lakes of the Adirondacks. This image (which is in the public domain) is a representation of a painting by Thomas Cole (a painter for whom I have a great deal of affection, mostly because of his subject matter)–it is called Schroon Lake, which is not so far from where I grew up.

I am thinking of there, of my lake. Of the island in the middle where blueberries grow, where any house built is struck down to the ground by lightning. I’m thinking of the house of the seven chimneys which burned long ago. They said one of the fireplaces was so large that two men could stand in it side by side touching finger to finger to side to side.

Up on the hill overlooking the lake was a one room school house. My friend Bill told me his mother or his aunt taught there and when she brought the kids out to play on cold winter days, they’d look down on the lake and see that the actress and actor who owned the seven chimney house would be out skating.

The cold there is enormous. It is the size of a mountain. And they say that sometimes in winter farmers would get lost from the barn to the house because of the wind blowing the snow down from Canada. Many tied ropes from barn to house so that they could feel their way.

I’m tying a rope to myself now and to the place where I need to be then. I hope that I will find my way and will not be lost.