Maryland in June

It was summer in Maryland.

There was rock hiking and freezing waterfall dunking at Cunningham Falls during a heatwave, what Carbon Leaf calls "river on the skin." There was wedding gift shopping in Frederick, tasting olive oils and vinegars out of rows upon rows of metal countertop cisterns at Lebherz Olive Oil and Vinegar Emporium, exploring fair trade shops and discovering Cafe Nola, home of the happy-beef burger and yam fries. There was an huge blue-skied potluck Father's Day picnic at Piney Run with a canoe and hula hoops and more watermelons that we could possibly have made a dent in, hotdogs roasted over the charcoal grill sharing space with bacon wrapped chicken-pineapple-date kebabs, Spanish tortas and cheese jalepeno dips, and a chocolate-vanilla-marble layer cake with strawberries and chocolate chips that my mom and I baked and decorated with the names of all the dads. There was hammock book reading and beer drinking at the few bars in town my brother and I had never visited, bike riding to the coffee shop to write our travel adventure novel (we broke the 100 page mark!) and hanging out with friends. There was a horseback riding adventure in Knoxville where the state of West Virginia butts up against Maryland, and the Appalachian trail weaves through the woods where the no-see-ums fly around your face, the beating sun broken by the thick green foliage of the trees. There was a baseball game at Camden Yards when the late afternoon heat lingered under the evening sun and pigeons swerved over the crowd and the smell of beer and brats and peanuts, my Orioles in orange beating the Pirates. The losing team’s name played a handy nautical pun on the Tall Ships Sailabration Event crowding the inner harbor’s docks with masted ships from all over the world, the Harbor flooded with warm-weather celebrators wandering in shorts and sundresses, small children riding on top of shoulders and people of all ages with ice cream cones melting in their hands, sailors in whites on leave from the ships crowding into the baseball stadium cheering on the plays. There was a girls’ night out dinner out with my cousins that lead to a many-hour driving expedition through a summer storm so massive that it made headlines across the United States and Europe. Roars of thunder, lightening that by turns split the skies in many pronged streaks and turned the entire sky brilliant sapphire blue, and hail that led me to hide the car under the whipping branches of a stand of young trees, listening for the tell-tale crack of windshield glass and grinning like a fool while the electric excitement of the storm rained down like hail. With family and friends we watched movies and stars, had campfires in the yard and taught my 94 year old great aunt to roast a hot dog. Venus transited the sun, and using the Internet, a white sheet of computer paper and binoculars we watched it progress. So it was summertime, filled with fresh fruit and the smell of drying hay yellowing in the fields under the sun and green corn growing in leafy rows, and the taste of Old Bay spice on everything, eggs in the morning, sandwiches and slaw midday, blue crabs on brown paper tablecloths: Maryland in June.