Halfway

Last week marked the halfway point in my time away from Milwaukee. Not halfway through the guest season yet--about three more weeks for that--but I've been away from my apartment, friends, books for about fourteen weeks.

Today I took another of my walks to Wonder Lake and found a fireworks explosion of cotton grass. It was a wonderful sight as, because of the 24 hours of light in the summer, we won't see real pyrotechnics until September and the end of the guest season after our Thanksgiving dinner.

This season finds me doing much the same in the way of time on the job and time off the job. The difference lies in the comparison. I'm not a greenhorn any more, the hill up to camp is not the endless climb it used to be. My responsibilities demand less of me physically and so I'm not losing weight the way I did last summer; those responsibilities demand that more of me be involved in what's going on around me, have my mind concentrated more on the larger picture. Because of this I'm not as ready to add posts to this blog as before. Everything was new before and made for reasonably interesting readin; now not so much. And the new parts I do have this year are personnel related and not as easily written about.

Hmmm. A blog post about not writing....

Still, my mind is actively thinking through what I'm doing, my body is just now feeling a few aches and oofs (I scheduled myself for a physical shift of breakfast service and a day of cleaning/puttering in the lodge, with a one-mile walk to start and end the day). If I examined the tone of last summer's writings, I am pretty certain I would unearth about the same emotions as I'm feeling now; namely the following:

a. I'm slightly homesick,

b. It's a l-o-n-g way to September, and

c. I'm starting to get the hang of things.

Just as I tell my guests each Monday morning before they board the bus taking them back to the remainder of their vacations, this is a wonderful place to be, it's a privilege to live here for the summer, and those 10 days of rain just past may come again, but right now the sun is shining, the flowers are blooming (yes, the fireweed blossoms fluff out the lower third of each stalk), and life is pretty good.