Oh, Summer Days

I went biking in the PA Grand Canyon today. It's one of my favorite places to be, to tell you the truth. Especially at this time of year, when tourist season is still in its beginning stages and the trail is still a little rutted from the winter, discouraging the tourists who are around from going too far. My friend Heather was with me: just the two of us. We rode in silence for most of the trip, only stopping once to watch a doe bent over drinking in the middle of the river. I couldn't help but revel in the memories that flowed along like the river next to me.

A good portion of my high school and college summers were spent at the canyon. There was a group of five or six of us who would go every week or so, as often as we could. Given the small town we lived in, it was one of the few places we could go to just hang out, and we often had it to ourselves. I would make the rounds, picking up various friends along the way (I had my dad's SUV and a bike rack, making me automatic designated driver). We almost always unloaded in the Darling Run vicinity and biked to the bottom of the Turkey Path, where there was prime access to the river (because, let's be honest, playing in the water was really the highlight of the trip). 

As I rode along today, I remembered many games of bike tag, usually started out of the blue and wavered on and off as we rode, the best strategy being to ride along until everyone forget who was it and sneaking up behind someone. No tag-backs, of course. I recalled the year three of us came in March, anxious to get the summer underway, only to find snow still covering the trail. Biking in snow, let me tell you, is extremely difficult, but makes for some great stories. Certain places reminded me of one accident-prone friend who always brought a first aid kit with him, just in case he skidded out on the gravel or managed to fly over his handle bars in one way or another. And of course the summer nights after a canyon trip: rinsing off in Catherine's pool and inevitably running around the perimeter until we had created a whirlpool, hunting for raspberries on Casey's property, a bonfire at my house, or lying in someone's yard on the sleeping bags we kept in our cars all summer, watching for shooting stars.

But the most vivid memories were more centered on what summer meant back then: our first tastes of freedom, late nights, and true friends of the opposite sex. The sticky red flush of skin under the hot sun; the salty smell of sweat mingling with the pungent odors of bug repellent and Coppertone Sport; the warm yet strangely refreshing breeze in our faces. The inevitable ache in butt, legs, and arms after a winter away from bikes and hiking. Dust, earth, the occasional rotting fish. Everything that makes summer the most magical season for kids and teens alike.

The friendships that came about as a result of those summer canyon trips are still some of my strongest and most treasured relationships. I'll never forget the boys struggling along with the red Radio Flyer wagon rigged up to the back of their bikes, carrying a picnic lunch we ate on a large rock in the middle of the Turkey Path waterfall. "Yellow Submarine" will always reserve a special place in my heart for the summer we found a plastic yellow submarine floating in the river. Rocks piled high in the middle of a river will send a shiver of dread through my spine as my mind's eye watches a friend narrowly avoid being hit by a tumbling tower of rocks he built.

Even though it was just Heather and me this time, and the bottom of the Turkey Path was swarming with pesky flies so we couldn't stand to stay too long, I feel as though my summer has finally, really begun. And that makes me indescribably happy.