Saturday on the Porch in the U.P.

When we got here two days ago, the chairs had blown every which way on the porch. We were lucky one hadn’t taken flight and gone through a window. Our canoe was lifted off the old bedspring that serves as its resting spot on the side of the house and tumbled across the back of the house, ending right side up behind the sauna. We found it filled with rain water, too heavy for one person to empty. For a while I thought we would have to bail it out but we lifted it together. As is often the case.

It is the end of the season here on Lake Superior. Yesterday’s great wind caused a sign to be posted on the bar’s door: “No whitefish today. Lake is too rough.” And it was rough all day, blowing hard. Our oldest bird house blew down, its ancient post snapped at the base. We have newer ones that we’ve put up in the twenty-three years we’ve been here but the fallen one was an original. It had stood out in the sand and snow watching while our old house burned down. We loved that bird house for that reason. It survived.

We took a walk in the Grand Marais School Forest before lunch. The chances of finding any blueberries left this late in the season seemed slim but we came upon patch after patch of the bluest blueberries and because I had a plastic bag in my back pocket, you know, just in case, I started picking. And it wasn’t long before I wanted to pick all the berries. This is what happens when you’re in the forest with blueberries hanging, their little round clustered selves ripe and waiting. You think, I should pick these berries so I have them. So I picked enough to put on ice cream tonight and in pancakes tomorrow and I carried the bag down the trail, its heft a source of accomplishment, but I had to stop when I saw particularly bountiful little bushes and pick more. Finally, I knotted the bag so I would quit. You have enough. It is enough.

Tomorrow is September 1st. By then, according to a goal I set for myself last year around this time, I was supposed to have put together a book of new essays. Because I write pretty short essays, I would need, say, thirty of them to make something resembling a book. I have maybe three. I’m not going to finish by tomorrow. I did a lot of things this year, including writing some decent pieces, but I wasn’t driven and I think that’s what you need to be to put together a book. Driven. I’m not that. Not right now, anyway.

In other news, it couldn’t be a more beautiful day.