It’s raining and things are turning green and I know exactly why I went back to the lodge last summer, even though I had sworn never to return at the end of the previous summer.

The rain makes me think of sleeping in the cabin, the bed so much cozier for the audible sound of rain outside. I’m remembering entire days spent wearing my rain pants, which seem so much more comfortable than the “business casual” clothing I wear for my job now. I’m remembering washing dishes in the kitchen, looking out across the bay and watching the damp shreds of cloud drag back and forth across the water, obscuring the ridge on the far side. I’m remembering sitting happily on a foot of old growth moss and surrounded by bushes dripping with blueberries and raindrops. I’m remembering the mornings where the first thing I did after crawling out of my sleeping bag was pull on my rainpants and a sweatshirt for the quick run out to the outhouse. The capricious gas stove (is there another kind?) heating water for tea…

And these thoughts bring the memories of the sunnier days, of course. There was an August afternoon, with that peculiar stillness you find during the midafternoon heat, when I discovered enough gripping quality in the soles of my xtratuffs to scramble up a small rockface and make a discreet inquiry as to the interior of this island on the beach of which I had eaten lunch for two summers. The sun came through the tall spruce in bright shafts, dust motes, etc, and there was copious moss and devil’s club, quite similar to the forest on the mainland around the lodge. This part of the island, however, was entirely lacking in trails; I didn’t even find an animal path to follow through the brush. Nevertheless, I found a blueberry bush somewhere and pulled off a sprig to carry back to the beach and the guests who I had rather rudely abandoned, since I was supposed to be guiding them. (That’s the only downside to guiding, you end up seeing the same place a thousand times, but you don’t quite have the freedom to go exploring. You have to stick around and explain this beach here, with which you are maddeningly familiar.)

The rain doesn’t make me remember, offhand, how the sheets have to be folded just so, how the “gourmet” food is full of mayo and margarine and velveeta, how you can’t both have the day off, even though there’s nothing to do but, oh, restack firewood. Follow Jon while he is weedwacking — sorry, “landscaping” — and rake up grass bits. And the management will be moving about hanging up framed posters bought in Anchorage, because that must be better than any of the art made by local artists in Homer. Homer’s not at all known for its artists, of course.

*sigh* Not bitter. Not bitter. Just frustrating and sad to see people, in one of the most beautiful places on earth, walling themselves into a Walmart-bought plastic box.

Spring and rain makes me want to kayak, that’s what I was saying.