Glorious July

My husband's favorite month of summer is June, but I have to say that my favorite one is July. Hands down. July is a true-summer month, with hotter days and cool nights, and not much of the muggy, horrid humidity that August will bring.

Last evening, my husband and I took our first motorcycle trip of the year, visiting a protected pond area near the suburb where we used to live four years ago, before we moved to the tiny city.

This pond area is a place of utter serenity and beauty, where flocks of Canada geese glide happily on the water, and where we saw the cutest of all Belted Kingfishers hunting from the top of a dead tree in the water.

The pond includes a trail that is less than a mile long so we decided to walk it. As we entered the trail, I read a large sign that said: "CAUTION: TICKS."

"Oh, no! Ticks!" I exclaimed, in horror, and stopped dead on my tracks.

"Is this going to a repeat of the grizzly bears?" my husband asked, recalling the time during our 10th anniversary in Montana when I refused to hike a trail in Glazier National Park because of the large sign that read: "CAUTION: YOU ARE IN GRIZZLY COUNTRY."

"No," I assured him, sounding more convinced than I actually was, and making him promise me that he'd check me over for ticks when we finished our walk, like I've seen chimps do to each other. Of course, unlike the chimps, he wouldn't be required to eat any ticks he found (and I'm happy to report that he didn't find any).

At one point during our walk, my husband halted and pointed something out excitedly to me, looking toward the high, blond grass. Because I tend to be one-track-minded about such things, I thought it was a tick so I started swatting myself and jumping around trying to get it off me. When he assured me it was not an insect, and when I was calm enough to listen, he told me there was a deer hiding in the tall grass.

Lo and behold, there it was! A beautiful young buck, with his perfect, velvet antlers, looked straight at us, and then straight at my husband's camera before bounding into the grassy meadow and vanishing.

Today, in this near-repeat of yesterday's glory, I'm hoping we'll take another ride to yet another park and hike the trails again to bask in the glorious weather of July. In these parts, summer is so so short, and there's so so much to enjoy.