Our friends SN and LL, and their dog Dusty Moe, lived here for a couple of years, long ago. They were remarkable hosts, magnanimous and funny, and probably could have made a million dollars running a bed and breakfast in another life. The place itself was small and rustic, with all the basic necessities, and a soul soothing, four season river out in the back yard. We’d pitch our tent on the riverbank, and be carried off to sleep in its lullabies. And sometimes, at 4 AM, waking and walking under the stars, it was easy to look up, and reach out – across the continents, and the centuries – to anyone who ever gazed into a night sky, or listened to the sound of flowing water.
11/28 update: SN tells me that “.. thanks to last summer’s hurricane the love shack is now laying in two pieces upside down on a big pile of rocks…” Well, I guess mostly it was a “soul soothing river”, although come to think of it … one early spring day, I looked up the river to see two kayakers working their way down – the winter runoff was at its peak, the volume of water huge – they were proceeding 20-30 feet at a time before taking shelter in eddies to figure out their next move. My first impression was “pretty crazy”, given the strength of the current and the huge rocks in the riverbed, but when I saw their discipline, I could only watch in admiration, and wave as they passed by.