Dateline July 21, 2019, Lake Sunapee with the Family

The whole family on the lake. Janice's brother Brian had rented a beautiful four-bedroom house directly on Lake Sunapee, room enough for all of us to be together.

We rolled in around three in the afternoon, and the owner, Sandy, showed us about; she has four lots right on the water, a sensational spot, with grand views and the constant comings and goings of the lake to watch. We passed a fine afternoon, did hamburgers for dinner, and there may have been a beer or a cocktail or two before bed.

A toast to Mom and Dad. Janice's mother and father lived on Lake Sunapee for twenty-five years, and the family has a hundred memories of the place, water skiing in summer and snow skiing in winter. Both her parents are buried at a cemetery nearby, and it is a family tradition to visit the grave and raise a martini to them.

Their father, Stan, was the king of making a martini, or at any rate of drinking one.

The Sunday match. Sunday morning Steve, Brian, John, and Janice headed back over to the Country Club of New Hampshire, where Brian had a tee time, and once again we were lucky enough to go off ahead of the same sixty golfers. Brian and Steve teamed up against the two of us, and we are pleased to report we won. There was a little grumbling on the other side when they finally took the thirteenth, the one and only hole they won all day.

The oak tree. After golf Brian had a pontoon boat rented, and we were loading the food and drink to head out, with Marilyn and Steve already aboard and waiting, when all at once there came a great crash and a lot of shouting about the two of them. A big oak by the water had let go and come down square across the boat, the canopy crushed flat, and thank the Lord Marilyn and Steve were unharmed. Holy cow.

Janice got the owner, Sandy, on the phone, and she had the right people there in no time, the dock man and the tree man, and Brian rang Sargent's, where the boat had come from, and the lot of them arrived inside half an hour. The Sunapee Lake police came along too, to write it up for the insurance; nobody there had ever seen the like of it on the lake.

We were lucky and blessed that no one was hurt and that the damage, in the end, was slight. The tree had rotted clean through the middle, which was why it fell, and Aaron, who runs the dock and barge business, came to lift it out by barge.

Sargent's pulled the canopy off, tested everything, and pronounced the boat sound, so we took it for a turn around the lake after all and were back by six, when Connie put marinated flank steak on the grill with their father's sliced potatoes and onions. The next morning the crew came to cart the tree away.

Rain, and a boat ride anyway. The rains set in from early Monday afternoon clear through Tuesday. When it let up a little late Monday, we all piled onto the pontoon boat for a run into Sunapee Harbor and a drink at The Anchorage, on the theory that we had paid for the boat and meant to use it, rain or no rain.

It came down harder on the way, and it was fairly pouring by the time we arrived, only to find The Anchorage closed Monday and Tuesday both. There was a t-shirt shop open where we usually pick up something stitched with "Lake Sunapee," but the selection was a no-go all around.

So it was back into the boat for the wet ride home, where barbecued shrimp was the order of the evening, and a good thing Connie had a big yellow raincoat for standing out at the grill.

The loons. One of the great gifts of a morning or an evening on Lake Sunapee is the sound of the loons; we have loved them every time we have come. The Great Northern, or common, loon is a diving bird and a tremendous fisher, able to go down as much as two hundred feet and stay under as long as three minutes.

Their haunting wail carries across the water to tell chicks and other loons where they are; the wavering tremolo, the so-called laughing call, is a cry of alarm or distress, or a word to newcomers on the lake; and the soft hoot passes only between family, an adult calling its chicks in to feed. Come winter they do not fly south as most birds do, but out instead to the Atlantic. A grown loon runs some twenty-eight to thirty-five inches long, with a wingspan close to five feet and a weight that can reach the better part of twenty pounds.