It’s Floating Time
Water warm(ish), sun soothing, breezes refreshing — it’s time to enjoy the lakes, the streams, the waterways. It’s time to get out the fun noodles or foam noodles or pool noodles which by any name are the same — fun.
It’s time to hang out in, to enjoy these midsummer water and weather conditions, to inflate the inflatable toys, the air mattresses, the rubber boats and even the old inner tubes and spend time in the water, wading, dipping, floating, dreaming.
This is the time of the season when laughter and low conversation carry across the water from adults who have waited all season for the variable temperatures of water and air to equally inspire lingering in a lake, when young children play most contentedly with the simple surroundings of shorefront and rudiments of water toys and when older children, even like teens, do admit that spending a day at a lake is “Sorta OK.”
Days conducive to in-water leisure are a reminder that many of the original vacationers and many of the locals who visited these lakes didn’t know how to swim. They stood in groups in the water not far from shore and appeared to just appreciate standing there. Or was it that they found swimming impossible in those long wool swimsuits that were the style?
Floating time is a time for quiet watercraft: canoes, kayaks, paddle boards, paddle boats — a time not to go too fast or too far. And, it is a time for sailboats that can go far and fast, but quietly.
Not into floating? Just enjoy what’s floating in the background, the setting of sails billowing in the wind, of birds bobbing patiently over their next meal, of the contortions of water reacting to wind — or to the wake of that distant mirage of a boat whose noise escapes in an opposite direction.
Don’t live on a lake? Be lured by these wonderful midsummer dream days to join the huge roster of Maine’s legendary access users.
Of course, a good float makes a good day at the lake any time. But when the water is warm(ish), sun soothing, breezes refreshing, days still long, don’t let that invitation to do it now get away.
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