I never have liked it that much. I miss the rain we had a month ago. I miss cool outside air at nighttime.
I'm back as a flushed, sticky five-year-old in the backseat of our Citation. My legs are sticking out straight in front of me. The cracked vinyl cording on the edge of my seat - lethally hot when I first climbed into the car - has cooled slightly but pinches the back of my knees whenever I shift my forty pound weight.
The discomfort didn't really matter when we were going to the mountains. Beach? Pssssshhhh. Who wants to go there in the summer? I'm going to where it is cool, and green, and there are waterfalls and trees and moss and that elusive smell of wood-spice.
It is one of the happiest blessings in my life that I now live with my favorite vacation area right in my backyard.
“Truth is a naked lady, and if by accident she is drawn up from the bottom of the sea, it behooves a gentleman either to give her a print petticoat or to turn his face to the wall, and vow that he did not see.”