A white towel around my neck, my curling hair is all wet, and I’m riding my mountain bike down a quiet highway in a standing position. Ah …the way back after a summer’s day swim.

It’s well past seven, almost eight and the sun, like us, is on the way home. I’m chilly now as the sun sets. I have goosebumps and my skin is drying out from living in pond water for the last four hours. My pedal strides are lazy as I slowly catch up to join a zigzag bicycle pattern my friends have already graciously started. We laugh right away bringing up our whole day and explaining to each other like it happened years ago. Drawing out every last second of detail and sodering it unconsciously to our souls. Every one of those day-at-the-pond moments we smiled at again and again. Over and over.

The adrenaline produced from a day like that would fuel the whole trip home for us. No matter how tired we were our along-the-way stunt dares and ten-second races kept us gaining ground without even noticing how close we were getting to home. Then, most times in the middle of a good joke or a story, one by one, each of my buddies would have to start branching off. Going their “rest of the way” alone. Breaking away from the pack usually with a middle-finger gesture, a newly learned curse word, or a bodily function. Sometimes all three. Soon, I too would cross that imaginary line that separated my neighbourhood from the rest of the world. The world of a twelve-year-old Ash. I remember that day swimmingly.

This second thought was brought to you by a walk earlier today on a path less taken. There was something about the atmosphere in the moment I was in and it overwhelmed me and I was there for it. I kicked up a little dirt and it transported me. Summer is indeed in the air and given the last few weeks, I needed this memory. Thanks, universe.

Until…