Lake Geneva Summer

Why check a seven day forecast when it offers no hope? I mean, it can offer hope, at certain times and on certain seven day screens, but today it doesn’t give me anything to work with. I’ve seen snow this winter, at first not enough of it. But then, a deep enough snow that I saved images of it on my phone and more in my head, and now I’ve had enough to tide me over. I’ve seen ice this year too. At first, just some ice around the margins, but now there’s so much ice that motorcycles with studded tires can ride around the entire thing just like you and I might in the summer aboard a floating boat. I’ve seen the iceboats skittering and ripping across the frozen surface, and that’s nice enough that I now am thinking of rethinking my opposition to my own iceboating path and I may indeed indulge in one of these boats at some point in the future. So I’ve seen snow and then I’ve seen ice, and in complete I’ve seen winter. Today, I’m over it.

I had my first dream of the season last week. I didn’t tell you about it after it happened because I wasn’t sure if I had legitimately dreamt it or if I had intentionally fabricated the thought in the moments before or just after true sleep. The dream found me under a sunny sky, but not a winter sunny sky that does little for me but burn my eyes and never my skin. In this dream I was aboard a boat, my boat, the one that I just had tuned two weeks ago so that I might consume a little less fuel and maybe even a little less oil this summer. I was aboard the boat, pulling in to a slip in front of Gage Marine, which is close to becoming known less as Gage Marine and more as Pier 290, but even so. I was pulling in, the water under me and around me, the boat white, the sun warm if fading. It was a summer dream, the first one of 2013, and the start of a spring season filled with obsessing.

And preparing too, because if there’s anything I’ve learned from my own life and from a lifetime spent watching the summer gyrations of others, it’s that there’s a famous lack of preparation for summer. Fall doesn’t need a lot of preparation. Winter does, but fall doesn’t. Fall just sort of happens one day when a large enough pile of dead leaves accumulates in the corner by your front door and one night you lie in bed and contemplate switching the thermostat to Heat. In the same way, Spring doesn’t warrant much preparation, for most. Winter is slowly ending, though most days it feels as though it is here to stay. Spring is coming, but what must we do for Spring? Not much, really. Our things are still put away, our grills still mostly covered, our snow shovels leaning against the side of the garage nearest the front door. There’s nothing really to do for Spring but wait.

And that’s when the complacency comes in, creeping at first like a thief in the middle of the darkest night, and then, soon enough, completely and thoroughly present. Anyone who has ever spent much time fishing, be it by fly or by spin, knows that the greatest danger in missing the next fish is complacency. Hours can pass without a strike. Casts extend and retrieve and extend again, with no real hope left for a bite. The motion becomes repetitive fast, and the mind wanders. Soon the eyes follow. And once you’re least expecting it, the fish strikes. The splash! The delayed hook set, and the disbelief of magnificent failure. Complacency.

It happens in us when we’re not fishing too. It happens right now. In late February, when Spring feels far away and Summer more a lightly recounted myth than a promised event. If we’re going to be ready for Summer then we must first brush off this Winter complacency, and we must prepare for Spring. Without Spring there can be no Summer, and I just realized now that I’m capitalizing words that needn’t be capitalized, as if you haven’t gotten enough of that on other real estate “blogs”. Capitalization or not, summer, it is a coming.

I think the best time to buy a vacation home at Lake Geneva might just be now. You can buy in May and close in June, and that seems reasonable, except that it isn’t. It’s horrible, actually. To buy in the middle of something like Summer is a kin to walking in to a basketball midway through the second quarter. Sure you get to see how the game ends, but you missed the opening tip and the introductions, and if you got there after they ran out of programs then you’re never going to know who number 33 is and why he insists on shooting free throws with his eyes closed. Summer isn’t a matter of participation, it’s a matter a preparation so that the participation can be thorough and complete. To close in May, perhaps April even, is to allow time to settle. It’s a soft opening of a vacation filled summer, and without a little warm up there’s very little that can be done properly during the haste of a Midwestern summer.

It’s cloudy today. Windy too. The snow has melted into great sheets and fields of ice. The scenery today is as ugly as the scenery gets. The market, however, is vibrant and more alive with buyers that I can ever remember it being. The buyers are those who know that Summer is best enjoyed in its entirety, and they’re here, motivated, picking over the good inventory that won’t be left if your lethargy causes you to wait until May to begin your search. Summer happens in 97 days, ready or not.