Dick’s Hideaway:

Couldn’t have felt more royal

Dick MacKenzie - www.dickshideaway.com

Quiet day at the lake. I was up early, before the sun, and sat in my robe with hot coffee at the bar. I had wiped a spot dry of the dew to set my cup and my elbows. The air was chilly but wind calm and lake still. Altogether a picture of perfection and pleasure.
It was a treat to refill the cup a few times while watching the sun come up to evaporate the dew and throw some heat on my shoulders.
As I sat in the quiet with the lake spread out in front, like a picnic blanket under a shady tree, I smiled at the memory from high school days when a buddy and I would go crow hunting before classes. From the moment he woke me by pulling on the rope tied to my wrist on the second floor where my bedroom was until we arrived, three or four hours later, to join our classmates who were still rubbing open their eyes, we had already been enjoying the best part of the day.
By evening I was ready to enjoy a little diet dinner in the Palace. I had a tiny walleye and a small piece of salmon left over from two days ago that I smoked on a Cedar plank in the barbeque, along with a grilled zucchini fresh from the garden, and the last of my pineapples on a stick hoard, gently warmed on the top shelf in the barbeque.
Couldn't have felt more royal if I'd had prime rib and Yorkshire pudding with gravy.
It's August, a fine month, when gardens burst wide open with a summer's worth of goodness, and the trees in the woods start sneaking in their autumn colors.