Sorry to be late posting this week’s column! I completely lost track of what day it was and kept thinking I had plenty of time left to write and post it. By the time I realized that it was already Thursday morning, I didn’t have time to write before work. Then, after I did finally write it on Thursday evening, our internet at camp went out and I wasn’t able to post it until I could get back to the house.
I don’t have much in the way of actual news this week anyway, but I do want to note that the Greenwood Historical Society will be open to the public this Saturday morning, July 19, from 10 a.m. until noon. Stop by to see the new exhibits and chat with volunteers Andrew and Donna Wheeler!
The Town of Greenwood will be accepting applications for both a highway foreman and a truck driver/heavy equipment operator/laborer. Stop by or contact the Town Office at 875-2773 for more information.
We enjoyed a wonderful weekend visit from granddaughter Lila and her mom, as well as my bestie, Donna. Lila is an avid swimmer and had been wanting some kind of swim float suitable for jumping off. My clever nephew Keith and his wife Cindi came up with a plan to turn a small homemade pontoon boat, which began life as a Hobie Cat sailboat that my brother Steve had picked up somewhere, into a raft. They towed it from their camp to ours on Sunday, and it was a great success; Lila spent hours swimming out to it and jumping off.
Will, Rosemary, and Eli the Wonder Pup had an unwelcome wildlife encounter a couple of nights ago. Since we’re at camp, and since Rosemary’s house in Bethel currently has no plumbing (a long story that started with a simple broken plastic fitting and ended with a flood and the need to replace a lot of things, like ceilings and carpets and cupboards—thank goodness for insurance), they planned to stay at our house for a while. When they arrived on Tuesday evening, Will was walking Eli to the door (on a leash, fortunately), when he suddenly lunged toward something in one of the basement window wells—something black and white and agitated.
Fortunately for Eli, and all the rest of us, it was a quite young skunk, and apparently young skunks, while able to spray, don’t have the sharpshooter aim they develop later on. Still, Eli got enough of a spritz to the face to make him somewhat stinky.
The skunk appeared to be stuck in the window well, which didn’t really make sense, since it was only ten inches deep or so, with sloping sides it should have been able to easily climb. Will took a video of it from inside the basement, and it seemed to be acting as if it had somehow gotten a paw caught under the edge of the window.
Because it was acting somewhat oddly, and because he had no idea how to get rid of it without getting sprayed, he ended up calling for a game warden. When the warden arrived, shortly before midnight, he managed to get the skunk to climb out and wander off, but not until after he spent about 20 minutes coaxing it. He said it appeared to be neither stuck nor rabid, just young (and maybe a little stupid).
I had a less dramatic wildlife encounter the next day, when I had a flat tire and needed to get out my spare. When I lifted up the floor of the cargo area to get to the spare, I found a mouse nest in the center of the tire, complete with a rather frantic inhabitant whose cozy home had just been disturbed. It made a few laps around the spare tire before apparently finding an escape route.
My mechanic tells me I do not want mice living in my car (I had already come to the same conclusion) because they can do tremendous damage, and he told me about one customer of his whose car was deemed totaled after mice chewed the wiring, to the tune of $36,000 worth of damage. Ouch!
I haven’t been reporting on many hikes lately, but I’ve been doing a few short ones, mostly in the Buck’s Ledge Community Forest, so I can hike back down to camp and jump in the lake.
As of today, I’m up to 43 hikes for the year, and I’ve had to reluctantly accept that I’m not going to make it to 100 in 2025, for the first time since I started keeping track in 2020. I’m trying not to be too hard on myself, since by the end of the year I will have had two knee replacements, which, if I actually follow the surgeon’s recommendation to wait 12 weeks before hiking, will mean I’ll have spent almost half the year out of commission (although I admit that I was doing short, easy hikes within six weeks of the first surgery, and I hope I’ll recover just as fast from the second one).
Swimming is my go-to exercise on these hot days. I’ve done ten long swims since my first one of the year on June 30, ranging (I think) from a half-mile to a mile. It takes me about an hour to swim either south and around Rock Island, or north and around the lighthouse, and I think both distances are about a mile. I almost always go early in the morning because that’s when the lake is most likely to be calm and “just like glass.” I’m not a very strong swimmer, and I don’t like swimming in even a little bit of breeze if I can avoid it. Swimming is great exercise without the sweat!
If you have news or events you’d like included here, email me at amy.w.chapman@gmail.com or call 207-890-4812. The next print issue of the Citizen will be out on July 25, but you can read the Locke’s Mills column online every week at amywchapman.com, or subscribe for free to have it emailed to you each week.
“In the land of skunks, he who has half a nose is king.” — Chris Farley
Be kind to yourself, Amy. I count every day that I accompish something, anything, as a win!