A chance conversation last week while I was waiting for my food pickup at La Fondita got me thinking about the way those of us who work for a living on the South Fork talk about summer. It was almost dark, late in the day. Katie Baldwin from Amber Waves Farm walked in for her own order, and, as one does, we exchanged the usual “How’s it going?”
Busy, she said. I agreed, shaking my head in commiseration. “You have to let the waves roll over you,” Katie said, then corrected her use of a surfer’s term. “It’s more like a duck dive,” she explained. The analogy is appropriate.
For those who don’t know, a duck dive has nothing to do with birds but is a trick for getting under an approaching wave. As a wall looms up in front of you, about to break on your head, you push the nose of your surfboard down and sort of kick your way through the green water until you pop out at the back of the wave. Up to a point it works; with all their bulk, it is just about impossible to duck dive a longboard. It makes for a very descriptive way to think about the season’s demands.
One does not survive summer by passively being washed around. Instead, the pressure is to be only met head-on and punched through to get to the other side. “Come by in September. We’ll catch up,” I think I heard Katie say. I was not sure; it was distracting in there.
To our right, three guys with carefully trimmed beards and close-cropped hair were loudly talking about what to order. To our left, a customer asked the exceedingly patient woman behind the counter which was the best burrito. At this, my mind went other places far beyond the conversation at hand.
See you in September, indeed.