Notes In The Margin

If the date at the end of this piece is to be believed, I finalized the last revision in July of ’94.  As of today that would be 27 years ago.  Of course, I began work on it years before that, so let’s say it’s been 30 years or so since I began fleshing out a rough outline.  Not that I had any formal plan before I started.  It just sort of evolved.  It grew into a 21,300+ word document that, even so, did not completely encompass those summer excursions that occupied and possessed my young life. The memories that I have of that place and time are as sharp now as when I started.  But I wanted to make sure that my “sense” of it didn’t cloud over with time.  I needn’t have feared.  It is as fresh and alive today as it was when I was a child.  I can still smell the lake and the sand, the cedars and the waving fields of corn.  I can see the gulls overhead and the sleepy cattle nodding by the river bank. I can hear the squeals of young children at the beach, car horns honking and the waves crashing against the break wall surrounding the harbour. I can taste the ice cream from the up-town dairy and the chips from the shop down at the beach.

It’s still there for me – and for those who might share that long-ago experience, I present this.
   

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