Help! I can't see the weather coming.

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. Shoot!  I hope this finds you period. I have been kidnapped to the central Adirondacks on the “beautiful” Long Lake without cell coverage or internet service. I can’t believe it. Where is that travel brochure? I need to read the fine print. Oh. There it is “You’re out in the middle of no where damn it  of course Verizon’s cell phone coverage is very spotty and if the internet goes out good luck getting it restored by Tuesday of next week. Also bears have been known to push through screened windows and they can “create quite a mess””.  Darn it! I feel sorriest for the young people who are with us. I am the only one who isn’t relying on the cloud for music storage. So I am perfectly content with Iris Dement, Patty Griffin, and Mindy Smith. Those artists are not exactly in the young hipster’s repertoire.

The cabin in the woods is beautiful. The Lake is approximately 50 feet away; I think. The woods are too thick to see the shoreline here. The lovely Miss Beverly, when looking through a small gap in the trees off the back deck, quipped, “We are short sighted at Long Lake.” Next time I come I am bringing a chainsaw. I want to look at the lake from my screened in porch. I can look at maple trees and pine trees compete in any over landscaped yard in Indiana anytime.  I want to look at the “beautiful” Long Lake and give it the beautiful moniker through my own judgment.

I also want to declare my love for the terra-forming glacier’s of the ice age. There are small mountains all around me. How can I see advancing Assassin deer if every road is going around a curve, or cresting a hill, or plunging down a ravine? It is almost intolerable for an Indiana boy. This morning as we ventured out to the Hamlet of Long Lake we were confronted by a fawn and a wild turkey; too much nature. That’s not all. If the advertising motif of the central Adirondacks is to be believed, we are in black bear territory. In fact the next line of the fine print of the travel brochure warns Hoosiers to beware and shut the windows in the house because bears have been know to push through window screens to gain access into the house.

Help! I have been taken to the land of black flies, black bears, assassin dear and the woods. I was joking with a resident of the Hamlet of Long Lake about how uncomfortable it felt to not be able to look up and see the weather coming. It is comforting to know that I have a good 10 mile horizon to decide if I need to head for the storm cellar. Not in Long Lake. You got from here to that tree and that is on a clear day. The resident of Long Lake laughed and said, “Funny you see things that way. The whole time that I lived in Indiana I felt like I was being stalked by the sky.”

For the geographically challenged, the Hamlet of Long Lake is about 45 mile from Lake Placid. The miracle of Lake Placid was not the United States victory over the Soviets it was the fact that the world even found the place to go compete.

There you have it. I am on vacation. As an inveterate goal setter, I have some things to accomplish this week. Number 1; enjoy the lovely Miss Beverly’s company. Number 2: make my peace with the terrain. Number 3; ride my bike out of this hole called Tarbell Hill Rd (for my Hilly Hundred Friends, it eats Mt Tabor’s for breakfast). Number 4; write a blog a day.

Each morning, I will make my way down to the internet café to read emails, blog comments and Facebook posts. For this week only, I will write about any topic one of you may faithful readers suggest. Let me know what it is.

For now, I am going to have another glass of wine and marvel at how much the cushion on the Adirondack chair across the screened in porch looks like a monster’s face.

Take care,

Roger