In Two-Thousand Eleven, I took a small vacation to Connecticut. Just north of New Haven there’s a wonderful pond with a bridge that cuts right through. Although there’s several houses and a hardware store, it’s surprisingly quiet. The water is marshy and there’s a skinny peninsula that runs parallel to the bridge that reminds me of the marshes back home in the Carolinas. The weather was perfect and cool. The heat wave was why I wanted to get out in the first place.
I remember my arrival caused quite the commotion last time, seemed I was some sort of celebrity to the folks around Connecticut. Wasn’t sure what I’d did or who I’d done but it was a full on paparazzi with their cameras and binoculars tryna get a good look at me any way they could. After a while it got old and I couldn’t relax anymore. I needed to be on my way back home and get some real sleep.

I’ve spent the last dozen or so years taking my vacation at some oxbows near Fort Mitchell, where my mama and them are from. Every so often a few of them paparazzis would find us and take pictures, but they didn’t come in the numbers like the ones in Connecticut. Over the years more and more of them would notice us on vacation though, and it became apparent that we were only becoming more and more sought after. We still aren’t sure what we’d done or what we’re doing to attract folks to bring out their cameras to see us.

Alas it’s Twenty-twenty-five, and I need another cool vacation. The climate here has been getting worse and worse, and I think about that sweet peninsula almost every year. I think I’m ‘on have to fly back up to Connecticut and visit it again. The temperature should be more mild than what I’ve got here, and maybe all them paparazzi folks will be on vacation too.