Page 11 - Dockside Magazine Muskoka, Summer/Fall 2018

PUBLISHER/PHOTOGRAPHER
Chris Thwaites
EDITOR/CEO
Andrew Wagner-Chazalon
ART DIRECTOR
Matthew Walker
ACCOUNTS DIRECTOR
Melanie Marshall
ACCOUNTS MANAGERS
Sarah Medd, Jacklynn Tregunno
STAFF WRITERS
Shelanne Augustine, Chris Occhiuzzi
STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Andrew Fearman
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Katelynn Nangle
DISTRIBUTION MANAGER
Jennifer Harris
OFFICE MANAGER
Sandi Matheson
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Scott Turnbull, Paul Bennett
COVER PHOTO PROVIDED BY
©Andrew McLachlan Photography www.andrewmclachlan.ca
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“ There ain’t no cure,” Eddie Cochrane
wrote in 1958 “for the summertime blues.”
Eddie was lamenting a
summer spent working instead of playing. He was born in Minnesota, so he understood that summer is too precious to waste on the trivial, the futile or the frustrating. Even the negatives of the season must
be embraced – if you live with real winter, you know there’s an unwritten law that you’re not allowed to complain about the summer. Too hot? Too humid? Too many bugs?
Too bad.
Put up with it: you don’t have to shovel humidity.
Summer here is short. In Muskoka we are never more than six weeks away from jacket- cool evenings, never more than three months away from a chance of flurries.
In hotter countries, summer
is an all-you-can-eat buffet, where you can linger as long as you like. Here, it can feel like a drive-through burger place.
When summer arrives, we are like starved dogs, devouring this season of warmth and light because we know there’s a time of scarcity coming.
We need to pack a lot of summer into our systems in a short time. But there are ways to
make it last. And August is one of the most delightful.
If summer is a meal, then June is the appetizer and July is the main course. But August, sweet and kind August, is dessert. We’re no longer famished, so we can linger over dessert, savouring each bite. We know the meal is nearly over, but
we also anticipate having the memory of its flavour on our lips hours later.
The secret to making the most of dessert – actual or metaphorical – is to not rush it. Eat it slowly and mindfully. Pause between bites. Appreciate it.
It’s a way of storing the experience to enjoy it again later, when you need a taste of it most.
The best summer memories for me are ones with a sensory element to them. It may be a flavour or aroma – the taste
of local strawberries, or the scent of milkweed in bloom are things I only experience in summer, but I can recall them to mind at will in any weather.
Sometimes the memories are tactile. When it’s minus twenty outside and I’ve spent an hour battling the snowblower, I know I will dip into my memory bank and remember the feel of the bathtub-warm water on my skin as I posed for a photo, sitting at a desk in Lake Muskoka.
There’s still a lot of summer to come. And even if fall or winter means a season spent in the warmth of the south, enjoy the delights this season has to offer. Soak it in, store it up, and anticipate reliving it again at will.
Andrew Wagner-Chazalon
andrew@docksidepublishing.com
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Soaking up summer