I’ve camped at Lake George every summer for at least the last 13 years, even when my daughters
I’ve camped at Lake George every summer for at least the last 13 years, even when my daughters were a few weeks old, and I had to stand up, hunched in the tent, rocking them back to sleep as their cries echoed against the mountains at night - alongside the calls of the loons I fell in love with. Now the camping trips have begun to mark the passing of time, the aging of children - their legs longer, their bodies leaner. I can recall the heartaches and problems I turned over and over in my mind on a certain rock, realizing that a few years later they are still there in some form or another. There are the novels conceived with my legs dangling in the clear water. A damp notebook. The storms weathered in the tent. A whisky underneath the kitchen tarp. A nap with the girls in the hammock.I’ve never thought of Lake George as one of “my” places - I think I will forever love the ocean - but I’ve always taken heart in Georgia O’Keefe’s love of the lake, though she too came by it via another, Stieglitz. And every time I rise from a cold swim I think of Stieglitz’s photograph of Ellen Koeniger, the black suit clinging to her wet skin, her evident joy - the viewer’s sense that her mind and body were in the same place at once, and how rare those searing moments of pure being are. -- source link