There's Something About Water

I just returned to my lovely old (110 years old!) stone house in suburban Philadelphia, and am longing to get back in my car and spend another 2 hours driving right back to where we just spent a week vacationing. There is a quiet, all-residential island off of Atlantic City , NJ, and I've been lucky enough to find a delightful 3-bedroom ranch house for rent right on the bay side of this island. No, it's not an ocean view, but somehow the connection to some other land form, even if it's a couple of miles away, makes the island even more desirable. It's as though we could silently thumb our collective noses at the rest of the state, letting them know we want nothing to do with their hustle and bustle and noise.

A week is never long enough for me. I wish we could take long, drawn-out vacations, but I haven't hit the lottery yet, and must settle for what we can afford. It's obvious that other people think houses next to the water are something special, as the rental rates are steep, and the waiting lines long.

Happily, the only company we had all week was a flock of sea gulls, silently perching on some old wooden posts connected to the sagging dock next door. There was also an occasional egret and some other feathered friends I couldn't identify, but they all seemed perfectly comfortable sharing their favorite spot.

The tide came in and went out, changing the landscape in sometimes startling ways. The miles of marsh land covering much of the way across the bay would virtually disappear every dusk, with only tiny patches of greenery poking out of the still waters. By morning they would be back, almost coating the full distance between our lovely house and the rest of New Jersey. I wished I had the patience to watch the whole process, but I could only manage a glance every once in a while.

Other inhabitants include a large number of turtles, who occasionally decide to march from one side of the island to the other, creating no end of traffic problems for the humans. One waddled out in front of me this week, and I stopped my car, got out, picked it up, and carefully plunked it in the grass on the far side of the street so its journey could continue. I didn't realize I was being watched, but applause broke out as I finished my task, from a smiling elder gent who had been weeding his gardens. It was nice to be appreciated, both by the turtles and the locals!

I do love this island, but it is not my only vacation spot each year. The other favorite is a lake in upstate New York, in the Adirondack Mountains. We rent a wonderful house there, on the water, for a week later in the summer. The lake water has a completely different character to it, and is inhabited by ducks, loons, an occasional cormorant, and a bevy of misplaced seagulls. They arrived out of nowhere about twenty years ago, and never left. I like to wonder where they hide in February, when the ice on the lake is 8 or 9 inches thick!

There are also plenty of fish in the lake, where my husband's efforts from our dock on the island have led to little more than a few crabs grabbing his lure, only to let go as they leave the water. In the lake, you can stick a safety pin on the end of a string, bait it with a piece of corn or a Cheerio, and you will catch yourself a sunfish. I know, I have done it, at about age 6.

You honestly couldn't get two more diverse vacation spots, but the feature tying them together is the water. It's slow, deliberate rhythms, whether they be tidal or created by a passing wind, are soothing to the greatest depths of one's soul. A quiet cup of tea in the early morning shared with the rising sun and the barely audible slipping of the water in and out of the shore line can start the most difficult of days on a gentle, determined note. The closing of each day is made calmer and sweeter by that same sound and an always spectacular sunset, perfectly reflected in the water.

I have lived in many parts of the country, and have taken trips to many others, but there will always be a preference in my heart for a place where there is water. It could be stream or a pond, a lake or a bay or an ocean, but for the time I can spend on its shores, somehow, it will become mine.