A North Country Walk to the River

I just spent a lovely weekend in Canton, New York with wonderful friends.  We generally make a trip up there right around the 4th of July every year for a birthday party celebration for a good friend, M.  While we've been known to make a round trip drive in one day, this year I decided I needed a little time away from home.  My poor husband took the previous weekend off to visit his brand new nephew, which was wonderful, but that meant he was stuck working this entire weekend.  Rather than miss out on the fun or have to do all the driving in one day, he generously allowed me to abandon him to his labors, and I threw a tent in M's truck and headed up to the country.

Canton is home to me in a lot of ways.  I only lived there for a few years, but miss it terribly.  If I could earn a decent living up there I'd move back in a heartbeat.  But I can't - not with my school loans.  Its country ways and small town personality suit me marvelously, so I just make do with visiting when I can.

The host for the annual birthday party is M's mother, who lives in a little house on a country road on property that was once farmed by her father.  Since it's a small house and I didn't want to take up space, I pitched a tent in the huge country yard for the weekend, where I could listen to the bullfrogs in the swamp as I fell asleep.  I do so love sleeping in a tent.

On one sweltering afternoon, M decided to show me the walk to the Grasse River so his dog Lexus and I could go for a swim.  The photos show the walk through the farm fields to the River.  The farm fields are now just hayed, and thankfully had recently been mowed.  But M loves that it's essentially the old family homestead, and was excited to show me a piece of his childhood.  I loved the picturesque old farm equipment along the way.

 

The walk was wonderful... except for the @$%&! deer flies.  My God!  North Country bugs I swear are more voracious than most other varieties.

I loved it though, despite the deer flies.  The whole experience somehow reminded me of the song Farmer's Daughter by Rodney Atkins... the farm hand cooling off in the creek before going "back to work in that dad gum heat".

Our swim convinced me that I am a water rat.  I hate crowded beaches or public pools, but give me a nice Adirondack lake or a deserted stretch of river, and I'll just become one with it, melding into the ripples and mud and coolness for as long as I am allowed.

This last shot shows the last of the party goers in the evening, after most of the wonderful friends we see too seldom had left to put tired, sun baked kids to bed.  It, too, reminds me of a country song, Barefoot Blue Jean Night by Jake Owen.  Romantic and lovely as it looks, this one is omitting the voracious blood-sucking mosquitoes that were plaguing us.  Oh well.  Even my beloved North Country has to have a flaw.