It was a hot July morning in the summer of 1976. The beating sun on the woods behind our house filled the air with deep, rich aromas of greenery that lingered in my nostrils. The air was still.
It was one of those days where it seemed to take too much effort to do anything.
When I came out of the house I slipped into my sneakers without untying my shoe laces.
My heels squished the back of the sneaks into a ragged blob.
Mutt waddled alongside of me and let out a heavy sigh as she laid down in the shade of the maple tree.
Our hammock was attached to the maple that provided the only real shady spot in the yard.
I climbed into it and rocked back and forth trying to stir up a breeze to cut through the heat.
A deer fly was annoying Mutt by continually landing on her snout.
She looked cross-eyed at the fly, then tried to bite the air as it lifted off and buzzed in again for another landing.
It was a blah day. I knew I still had to cut the grass and pick weeds from the garden where the shoots of beans were making very good progress.
But the heat drained my ambition.
I couldn’t think of doing any more than just lay there and sweat.
Then, my friend Eddie came cruising down the road. He dropped his bike within a foot of the hammock and climbed in.
“Want to go fishing?” he said.
“Naw. Too much effort,” I said as a trickle of sweat formed around the band of my ball cap.
“What about a swim?”
I pondered the question before replying, “No, that’s too much effort.”
Eddie asked a few more questions about things we might do, but all of those were too physically taxing as well.
Then he asked about the sprayer my Dad used to water the lawn. He had come up with a plan that involved a fair amount of effort, but had a big payoff.
We unrolled the hose, hooked on the round green sprayer and placed it under the hammock.
Then we let the water go.
We took our places in the hammock and enjoyed the continuous cool spray.
Even Mutt was happy with the results as she laid on her side and let the water roll over her.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com