Cornucopia: Somewhere Down The Road

Somewhere Down the Road
By Kate Chamberlin

Somewhere down the road, our friend’s lake home dawns with a beautiful clear sky and morning sunrise. It’s a balmy 27° outside but nice and warm with the wood stoves running inside.
The lake is like a mirror reflecting the trees from the other shore. The loons are back and starting to lose their gray winter plumage. Our friends have seen a pair of Wood Ducks do their fly-bys of the camp in their synchronized flying style. Out in the water below, a pair of small ducks they can’t recognize, have been paddling up and down the shoreline. The geese have also found their way back. A few fisherman have made their way here too, a bass boat is flying past the camp in a rush to get somewhere to fish. So they guess except for the current temp. the winter has past, yet, we are still ‘socially distanced’.

Somewhere down the road in a grassy, open park, a family has gathered from the far corners of the county for their annual Memorial Day picnic. The families that quarantined together are grouped together. Each group is about six-feet from the other group, forming a large, loose circle, similar to an opalescent pearl necklace. They hoot and holler back and forth to each other through their unique, colorful home-made face masks. They want to hug each other and share the traditional, family picnic casseroles, as they used to. Each of the younger children has a pool noodle, because, ‘social distance’ is the mantra of the day.

Somewhere down the road, the home-owner is digging a victory garden in his back yard. The sod is fragrant as fresh dug dirt is and heavy from the recent spring down-pour. The tangled, matted grasses from last summer, make the sod difficult to remove. Visions of lush green vines heavy with pendulous zucchini; and nearby red, succulent tomatoes; orange baby carrots topped by their feathery fern-like leaves; blood red beets with deeply veined greens; and bright patches of companion marigolds dance in his head. To reduce the need to mow between the raised beds, the home-owner has place planks. The square-foot garden technique is easy to maintain and efficient, but, isn’t social distancing the plants taking it a bit too far?

Somewhere down the road, in our new reality, we’ll visit our friends on Butterfield Lake, host a feast made from the bounty of our garden, and hug our young and old family members, until our hearts are once again filled with tangible love and joy.