In August, it will be ten years since I have called PA home.
It seems so long ago, but some of the memories are still so fresh in my mind. I really miss it, not PA, persay, but my Dad's house at the lake. It was such a great place to grow up- it was like a weird storybook childhood kinda place.
I remember waking up early and being on my bike with JF, SB, LB, JM and the rest of the gang by mid morning (unless, of course, it was Saturday, then it was after cartoons), playing all day, sometimes camping out in the yard. I remember boat rides to the island and looking for the sunken ship (ok, so it was an old sunken row boat, but back then it was way cool).
Even when I was older I loved going there with my friends from "the city". I remember being snowed in and everyone had to stay over. Ice skating and sledding. Floating around the lake on tubes. Trying to swim to the island- I remember TG freaked out and started swimming the wrong way and my Dad had to come out in the boat and save him...what was he doing there anyway? I remember the Lake Project- science to benefit nature. Good times, good times.
*Sigh*

"A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows."
Henry David Thoreau

"The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free."
Willa Cather