Now Playing: Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, "Pathetique."

This afternoon Cindy and Scott came over, and the three of us drove out to Yellowwood State Forest to hike. The drive into the forest was barely marked and turned out to be a pitted gravel road, slashed across by shallow creeks, which Cindy’s small Ford Focus bumped across. We walked a 4.5-mile trail that ran in a long loop around the lake.

The trail ran up and down the spurs of the hills. It snaked up into small valleys between hills in order to ford creeks where they were narrower, before they fanned out into marshes around the lake. We splashed across several small creeks on flat stones, the clear, shallow water flowing fast under ferns. On the hillsides marched the great beeches, red and white oaks, and sugar maples. Massive: the beeches with skin-smooth silver bark, the white oaks with deeply corrugated pale bark, the red oaks with their darker, more finely ridged exteriors. On the hillsides across the lake, sycamores made splashes of celadon against the jungle green of the other trees. We entered arcades of pine trees, again, straight, immensely tall. Our feet were silenced on pine needles, and that wonderful, aromatic smell mixed with the smell of masses of wild white roses growing over fallen trees. 

We came across a much larger creek, dammed with fallen logs. Scott tried to teach Cindy how to skip rocks on a wide patch of smooth, deep water. We walked through a pine wood, absolutely silent, and then back up into the hardwood forest again. The forest was almost absolutely silent. As dusk fell the light deepened almost imperceptibly, until we were walking in a silent greenness. The wind rose in the trees. We finally came out at the dam at the bottom of the lake, where people were fishing. Wild daisies, red clover, and spiderwort were growing there, with Queen-Anne’s-lace. 

The trail required that we cross below the dam, but because of the amount of water flowing over the spillway, we turned back and took the road instead. By this time it was nearly seven. We marched on the extra half-mile to the trailhead. The drive back to Bloomington was lovely: the sun was just seeping through the clouds. Sheets of water on either side of the road shimmered in its vague light—so much water in the fields after all the storms! In Bloomington we went to Kroger to buy things to grill. Courtney came over to our house, and Lindsay came downstairs from her room and joined us. 

Starting the fire on the grill was an adventure. I didn’t put on enough lighter fluid to begin with, so it took several attempts with the lighter and quantities more lighter fluid (thanks to Scott) before the coals were actually burning. We finally put the top on the grill and left it to sit and heat, while we sat inside, snacking and talking. When the coals were hot enough, I went outside to put brats and hot dogs on the grill. Smell of smoke. Cool outdoors. Watched the clouds continue to roll away from the periwinkle sky. 

When the meat was ready, we all sat around the small table, eating hot dogs, brats, chips, fresh cilantro…. Suitably summery. We made s’mores, too, of course. Oddly enough, by this time the coals were properly on fire and extremely hot. Those perfect little rose-petal flames simmering endlessly over the coals. It would’ve been easy to cook meat on them by now, but it had taken them so long to get to this temperature! 

Three leggy Mayflies snuck into the living room, and a big Junebug buzzed onto my shirt and, when I flicked it off, slammed into the porch light. At about eleven Scott, Cindy, and Courtney went home. Sleeping with the windows open tonight for perhaps the last time for awhile—it’s supposed to be hot this week.