Squam Rock

The Fourth of July came and went. Nick's last (and only) load of fireworks from Seabrook is still sitting above the cabinets in the kitchen. We let half of them off in the Estabrook parking lot in 2006. Andrew was pestering his parents to let him buy some, and I thought of Nick.

For many years, the Fourth of July was defined by Erma's. There's a photo of us in her garden, Nick, Alex, Elizabeth and me, taken by Esther. Nick is about eight. The holiday followed a familiar pattern, one I had known since my own freshman year in college. A family gathering at Erma's, me as the adoptive cousin, Elizabeth and the boys adopted too. Seeing the family - Erma, Phil, Marcie, Mike and Candace, many more. Usually some neighbor's dog in the middle, and the cats - Pinklepurr, maybe Dandy, who knows. The beach, of course, and on the way to the beach, the climb to the top of the hill, through the trees, and then the bare top and Squam Rock.

Squam was always a challenge. There is really only one easy way up, as I discovered sometime in 1974. And getting up is the easier part. I don't remember how old Alex was when he first climbed it, only that Nicholas had to climb it too. Right away. I think he climbed it pushing off my hands, the first time, to get up over the first part. Then it gets easier as you get to the top. From the top there's the view - not quite this one, but close - the little channels of melt water, the mysterious nubs of iron where someone, probably a hundred years ago, built some sort of ladder or railing, now gone, probably for gentleman adventurers to climb up. And the vertical sides, it seems on three sides. The descent is harder - the choice between an undignified crab walk / slide on the seat of your pants, or the what-the-heck run.

Then there was the year that Nick climbed it on his own - no helping hands, no seat of the pants, just a wild scramble up and a wilder one down. I think he ran all the way back to Erma's to tell us. They weren't supposed to be climbing it without one of us there, of course. We (or at least he) climbed it every visit - probably for the last time in the summer of 2004, after Dad died. Erma was like a great aunt to Nick and Alex, died in April 2005. What a wonderful person.