By Mitch Lee
There it was… landing on the back of my hand was the first Black Fly of Spring 1978.
I reached over with my free hand to give it a whack, making it also the first swat-killed Black Fly of the season.
I was sure I would see a few more that mid-May morning as it was a bit hazy and felt as if we were in for an afternoon pop-up thunder shower.
I clapped my sneakers together over the edge of the porch to rid the treads of dried mud and sat down on the warm flagstone to tie them up for a mid-morning adventure.
My dog Mutt was waiting impatiently at the end of the walkway making a harrumphing sort of sound, as if that would speed up my shoelace work.
It was not long before I felt the sensation of another fly in the hair of my neck.
The bugs didn’t seem to be swarming yet so we decided to just hike on down to the lake and see what sorts of things had washed ashore on the long sandy beach that week.
No sooner had we reached the edge of the water, Mutt was wading up to her belly and biting at the gently bobbing waves.
I strolled along kicking at the sand, occasionally picking up a stick or pinecone to toss in the lake like a Frisbee over Mutt’s head.
She collected as many as she could, then returned to shore and plopped them down before returning to the lake for more.
In several places along the beach the Black Flies showed up to greet me by taking a tour behind my ears.
They didn’t hinder us in any way and were not really a problem at all.
I knew this would probably be the last day for at least a month that we would be able to amble along inspecting things and not have to worry about losing a quart of blood.
By the time we reached the end of the beach and turned back for home, a stiff breeze had come up.
I could see large dark clouds forming low on the horizon. Mutt walked contentedly along the sand, stopping at her stick piles and nosing into the low bushes that lined the lakeshore.
A few large rain droplets had already found their way to the flagstone by the time we reached the porch.
We sat on the warm rock under the overhang as the storm picked up speed.
I could hear the rain as it raced through the budding branches that formed a canopy over the porch roof in a five-minute burst.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com