My Favorite Time of Year

On every calendar I’ve owned the past ten years, May 1st has a big, red circle around it. It’s the day the campground opens, the day the water and electricity gets turned on, the first day we can spend the night in the woods again. I count the days until May 1st as a five-year old awaits Santa Clause, craving those long May and June days there when the kids are still in school and other campers haven’t really settled in yet. We are usually one of maybe four or five other couples living there this early in the season. It’s quiet. Everything is newly green and coming to life. It’s quiet. The lake glistens. It’s quiet. The smell of spring is intoxicating. And have I said how quiet it is?

I don’t think I could live right smack in the middle of the city as we do if we didn’t have this oasis to escape to in the summer.

But this year, our escape will be very different from previous years. I won’t have those ten-hour days when I could lose myself in whatever I was writing after hubby drove off to work; he’s going to be home for the summer recovering from knee replacement surgery. And we won’t be staying at the camper after this weekend, because of the surgery. It’s unknown when we’ll actually be able to move in for the summer.

Last weekend we raked leaves and took tarps off the camper we live in and our guest camper. My flower beds got cleaned up, the cupboards got stocked. We gathered kindling, made the bed with fresh linens, scrubbed winter dirt away. The owners of the campground actually turned on our electric early for us, so we could get it all ready for hubby when he’s able to go there to recover. We had a lovely day there, complete with the first camp fire of the season. Driving home to Syracuse, we felt as if we’d been away for a week.

I’m hoping this coming weekend brings us that kind of respite. Our heads are swimming with all the details of the knee replacement surgery hubby will have a week from Friday. My “to-do” list seems endless. We need to run away from it all for a few days, listen to the birds sing, drown in the peace and quiet of the awakening woods. I’m packed, I’m ready for quiet.