We were in the early stages of a month-long holiday drive around New England visiting friends and relatives when we caught Covid. It caused fever (moderate for Ann, low for me), coughing, and lethargy and turned us into people to be avoided. So, we made some adjustments in travel plans, stayed at Ann’s brother’s Boston apartment for a few days while he was away, then holed up for a time in a cabin on a small lake in Maine, where we are imitating Fonda and Hepburn in On Golden Pond. The worst of the Covid symptoms have passed now, but we’re still a little short on energy.

The cabin is modest and, I suppose, classic. It has knotty pine paneling, and it’s not so much furnished as cluttered. There are so many braided rugs, braided table coverings, and braided doilies, the mind casts about for possible causes. A massive going-out-of-business sale? A previous owner obsessed with braiding? Designation as an official disposal site for unwanted braided things?

The television has little we want to watch, but there is plenty of reading material, including numerous aging algebra textbooks and issues of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. One of the latter features a cover story “Why the Japanese Can Never Defeat the B-29.” Also some novels of limited literary merit but great popularity.

Through the magic of the internet, Ann calls to her computer screen books from the New York Public Library. I’m using this interlude to study how point of view and internal monologue are handled in some of the popular novels that are here among the algebra books. It has been informative but tedious. Patricia Cornwell, Jack Higgins, Robert B. Parker, et al are, at best, thin gruel. I haven’t gotten into the algebra texts, but I may yet. I expect they will be every bit as engaging as Nora Roberts.

Down below the wall of windows on the lake side of the cabin is a pier, and a little way out, there is a swimming raft. The water is inviting, but too cold to enjoy. Docks are visible elsewhere around the shoreline, but we’ve not seen anyone swimming. No one on the water at all, except now and then a couple of guys fishing from boats.

Days are long and nights short, just the way I like it; in various way, I’ve always been a little afraid of the dark.

A family of geese paddle by some mornings like joggers. We’ve heard a loon but haven’t seen any. On sunny, windless days the pine trees around the shore are mirrored on the surface of the water, and sometimes at dusk, the setting sun adds a Campari tint to the water.

In a clearing beside the house, there is lawn furniture and a fire pit. I went there one day when we first got here intending to read and enjoy the quiet. (I haven’t heard a single chain saw, leaf blower, or any other boy toys. Sometimes, though, a Harley or two with modified pipes thunders by on the road and reminds me that the stillness is not absolute.) I didn’t last long out by the fire pit. Small caterpillars drop from trees in numbers pretty well sufficient to cover whatever is below, including me. Katherine Hepburn comes to mind again – these caterpillars are every bit as icky as the leeches she encounters in The African Queen.

One sunny afternoon, Ann and I tried to have drinks out on the pier. None of those disgusting caterpillars dropped on us there, but blackflies quickly drove us back inside.

As my energy has begun to return, I am resuming the back exercises I learned in PT after the last surgery. Part of that program is to walk as much as tolerable. It turns out that my body will tolerate a lot more walking than the elements readily permit. Besides blackflies and those paratrooper caterpillar things, the woods harbor Lyme-disease bearing ticks.

We’ve had several rainy days, but they are not as unwelcome as they would have been if being outdoors on sunny days was less intolerable. Looking out over the lake, watching clouds roll in and then becoming enveloped in gray damp is fairy-tale charming. And it allows us to be in another movie – Five Easy Pieces. Our bed is in an added-on room with a sloping shed roof on which falling rain resonates almost like on a tin roof. It’s a peaceful sound.

We’ll emerge in a few days, renewed and refreshed, blackflies and caterpillars notwithstanding.