My favorite date I've ever been on...

...was eight years ago and only cost the price of two sandwiches and two pints of beer. I met this lad when I was 18. We have never lived in the same city, but if we had, we would have definitely dated. He visited me once. I visited him once. The last time I saw him, it was the summer of 2003 for only one day in Vermont. He had the whole day planned out. We hiked early in the morning to Lake Pleiad. He went swimming in the lake in his clothes. I watched from the rock (in the third picture). We hiked back down and got in his car, drove to get sandwiches and ate them overlooking the downtown and an old watermill. Then we went to a local brewery (Magic Hat...this was before local breweries were cool and before I had ever heard of Magic Hat). We left there and went swimming in another waterfall on our way to Lake Champlain, where he pulled a small sailboat into the water. He had asked permission to borrow someone's boat for the afternoon. We spent the day in the middle of the lake, sailing and overlooking the Adirondack Mountains. It was beautiful. Then we went to his friend's apartment, made dinner and ate on the roof of the house while the sun was setting. I remember laughing. I remember telling myself to remember that day, because it was certainly one worth remembering. I've never had anyone plan a more perfect day....or put so much care into a date. This was eight years ago. We've remained friends through email, postcards and phone calls. A few days ago I got a call from this man. Out of the blue. He is at Johns Hopkins. They found a tumor in his spinal column, and did surgery on it. He is in a lot of pain. He doesn't have many answers. It has been so many years since I have seen him, but he is one of my very favorite people. I just can't even explain how much I want to fly up there, and crawl into bed next to him and just hug him until everything is okay. Life is so messy.

I've been trying for days to scan photos of that perfect day from my silly scrapbook I made of that summer, but my scanner broke. I decided today that you don't need clear photos on this blog to get the story. Just the story of that day is the beautiful part. You get to see the photos posted here as they appear as photographs of photographs in my album. I like that more, almost. I'm going to go visit him soon. It has been far too long.