fic: Summer To The Winter Country
Jan. 28th, 2015 06:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanter1944This original fic has been prompted and sponsored by technoshaman. The comments beneath Spring Is Honest sparked my muse, and the rest is natural history. :)
Summer might be sand.
Go ahead, say so. You're not wrong, not entirely, though anyone coastal who references the bleached pale purity of that medium will have their claim disputed in a hurry by the folks from the territories below Lake Superior's south shore.
Perfect, pristine, movie script white sand? What's that? This isn't the Sahara, and if you're walking on a California beach as the sun sets over the ocean you're literally days away. No, here it's different. Land of lakes and rivers, perview of watercraft barely ten feet long, home of clandestine cliff divers, shadow shelter of evergreens, country of bonfires--here it's different.
Sand, yes, sure, but cut it with a certain amount of mud, sully it with imperfections, make it stick as much as trickle so that children sensitive to such things almost, almost don't want to touch it. That's ours.
Make it so it takes a slog through thickets of positively terrifying shore weeds to reach it--that's ours, like it or not.
Wash it in saltless water, fresh water, little spattering wavelets from passing motorboats and the prints of slapping bare feet - that's ours, too. That's what we know.
Darken it with sediment and fertile earth - here middling brown, there almost tan, there a faded taupe-grey no Hawaiian beach would ever be caught wearing. All ours. Litter its lighter itterations with a thousand granite stones and the occasional freshwater clam shell, then don't bother to watch your step, because you can't. That's what we know.
Soak it in cloudy currents swirled with silt; sprinkle it in the bottom of suitcases that are going to smell faintly like lakewater for a month no matter what anyone tries to air them out; mix it with pavement pebbles and grains of French fry salt, then scatter what results all over the floormats of station wagons - that's what we know. That's how we live.
Dig into it with discarded sticks, dust it with traces of algae, dry it on the bottoms of canoes--that's what we know.
Stick it between a thousand toes, broil it under a July sun and let it pretend it's in Florida if it wants, veil it under a barely-there layer of campfire smoke, serenade it with clumsy folk songs played on somebody's battered guitar--that's what we know. That's how we dream.
Burn it in candles, sculpt it with tiny fingers, bury it in lake effect snow, churn it up during volleyball games, track it all over the kitchen floor--that's sand to the winter country.
That's summer to the winter country.
Summer might well be sand, at that.
Once again, I've done the Wisconsin author thing. The imagery here is drawn from my own experiences with lakes, rivers and local beaches.
technoshaman. The comments beneath Spring Is Honest sparked my muse, and the rest is natural history. :) Summer might be sand.
Go ahead, say so. You're not wrong, not entirely, though anyone coastal who references the bleached pale purity of that medium will have their claim disputed in a hurry by the folks from the territories below Lake Superior's south shore.
Perfect, pristine, movie script white sand? What's that? This isn't the Sahara, and if you're walking on a California beach as the sun sets over the ocean you're literally days away. No, here it's different. Land of lakes and rivers, perview of watercraft barely ten feet long, home of clandestine cliff divers, shadow shelter of evergreens, country of bonfires--here it's different.
Sand, yes, sure, but cut it with a certain amount of mud, sully it with imperfections, make it stick as much as trickle so that children sensitive to such things almost, almost don't want to touch it. That's ours.
Make it so it takes a slog through thickets of positively terrifying shore weeds to reach it--that's ours, like it or not.
Wash it in saltless water, fresh water, little spattering wavelets from passing motorboats and the prints of slapping bare feet - that's ours, too. That's what we know.
Darken it with sediment and fertile earth - here middling brown, there almost tan, there a faded taupe-grey no Hawaiian beach would ever be caught wearing. All ours. Litter its lighter itterations with a thousand granite stones and the occasional freshwater clam shell, then don't bother to watch your step, because you can't. That's what we know.
Soak it in cloudy currents swirled with silt; sprinkle it in the bottom of suitcases that are going to smell faintly like lakewater for a month no matter what anyone tries to air them out; mix it with pavement pebbles and grains of French fry salt, then scatter what results all over the floormats of station wagons - that's what we know. That's how we live.
Dig into it with discarded sticks, dust it with traces of algae, dry it on the bottoms of canoes--that's what we know.
Stick it between a thousand toes, broil it under a July sun and let it pretend it's in Florida if it wants, veil it under a barely-there layer of campfire smoke, serenade it with clumsy folk songs played on somebody's battered guitar--that's what we know. That's how we dream.
Burn it in candles, sculpt it with tiny fingers, bury it in lake effect snow, churn it up during volleyball games, track it all over the kitchen floor--that's sand to the winter country.
That's summer to the winter country.
Summer might well be sand, at that.
Once again, I've done the Wisconsin author thing. The imagery here is drawn from my own experiences with lakes, rivers and local beaches.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-29 05:05 am (UTC)