It’s a beautiful day, the best of the summer, and the last of the summer. There’s [...]]]> I wake Alex up early, and we pack towels, books, and drinks into the car. We’re on our way right on time, and we stop at the usual place for bagels and coffee before setting out on the highway.

It’s a beautiful day, the best of the summer, and the last of the summer. There’s not a cloud in sight. It must be thirty degrees. If only it had been like this the many other weekends before. It has been a summer of rain and false starts and cancelled plans, but now we’re on our way with one last try for a day trip away from home.

The trip is a long one, more than two hours, and on the way we have to fill up. Before, as we’d move west and south, the clouds would gather, and the temperature would drop, but today, the sun stays bright, the sky crisp blue and hot. It’s perfect weather.

When we reach Port Rowan, it’s a further twenty or so minutes on the road leading along the forty kilometre spit toward Long Point. The weather still holds, the air is still hot and beautiful. There are lots of cars around, and as we get near the park, it seems it will be a crowded day in there. But not where we’ll be.

We park, and take out the towels and the frisbee and the umbrella, and start a long thirty-minute walk along the park’s beautiful beach. The lake is stunning. There’s a breeze, but the surface is relatively calm, and perfectly reflects the dark blue of the sky and the slightly pink horizon at the furthest edge of sight. It hasn’t looked this beautiful all year. When we near the water’s edge, we can see right to the soft rippling sand at the bottom for as far as we’re able to look out.

We walk past the rows and rows of moms lying motionless in the bright sun, and kids and dads yelling and laughing in the water. As we near the eastern part of the spit, the crowd thins, and then there are just a couple of families, and then we are at the division line between the park and the boundary along the bird sanctuary. We cross under the metal rope. There’s still a few people even here. A man is taking pictures of his wife and infant daughter playing in a shallow pool of water. “Can you take our picture,” he asks. Of course. It’s always him and the little girl, or his wife and the little girl, and they can never get a picture of all three, he says. They’re very happy, and both of them thank us several times.

Now there is nobody else, but up ahead, we can see one or two bodies along the beach, and somebody’s in the water. We’re here. We won’t have to wear clothes or a swimsuit along this part, at the very edge of the private property that extends to the furthest point of the spit. We find a nice flat space in the sand, and set up our umbrella, and spread out our towels. There’s only a few people here: an older couple at the very water’s edge, where a woman is reading in a lawn chair in the shallows before the lake opens up; a younger couple to our right; one or two others lying in the sand, or moving along the beach.

We walk out into the lake, past a warm shallow full of tiny minnows, and into the expanse of water under the sky. The water is beautiful, reflecting bright blue, and large ripples lap at us as we make our way out as far as possible before the lake would go over our heads. Alex has his goggles. He swims a few short laps of freestyle in the open water.

It looks kind of neat. I go back for my camera, and hold it carefully above the water as I make my way back to him. I get some pictures of him doing strokes, and then he’s standing waist-deep in the lake with the sun behind him, shining off his wet shoulders, his goggles on his head. I take more photos. He glides into the water on his back and free-floats, his face turned to the blue sky. “This feels weird, like I’m falling,” he says.

After a while, we return to our towels. Alex reads. The sun moves toward the western horizon, in the opposite direction of the furthest point of the sand bar. I lie back and doze. I listen to the sound of the waves rolling up onto the sand, the gulls and cormorants croaking or cawing in the distance.

Some time passes, and it’s hot. We take up the frisbee and go out into the lake, and toss it back and forth for almost two hours. It’s the most fun we’ve had. We both lunge as it flies overhead, or to the left or right. You can do this much better in the water, because there’s no danger of a hard fall to the ground. It’s great stretching out into the sky to reach as it flies past, then crashing into the water — either with the disc in hand, or not. The waves sometimes add to the push of water from the lunge, and many times it rolls over my head, or up against my face. I’ve got my hat on, and Alex laughs at the sight. Water pours over the bill in front of my face.

Sometimes I stop while Alex swims for the frisbee. I stand in the deep water and look into the blank horizon, against the wind, which has now picked up. It’s gentle and beautiful, still warm, but holds in its crispness a hint of the coming autumn. Then I fall back and float, looking up at the perfectly clear dome of sky.

We’re done after a while, and return to the beach. The afternoon is getting on to evening; it’ll be turning dusk soon, and we should go.

After we pack, we walk in silence back along the beach. It’s empty now on this part of the spit. Alex is walking slowly many paces behind. When we get to the park’s lakefront, we walk past a little city made out of sand that someone has built. It’s very detailed. There’s even an airport, a parking lot with little sand cars, and a baseball stadium with a diamond and grandstand seating. There’s some buildings with long blades of grass connecting them in arches, and everywhere there are feathers and sticks and grass used as markers and columns. At one end, there are three huge pyramids made of sand. Are they mountains?

Out on the lake, the setting sun is sparkling on the surface of the water at the crest of the little waves. It looks alight, or as though there are small jewels or lights rising above the surface and lowering again.

We’re very tired when we finally reach the car. We drive out of the park, and through Port Rowan toward Simcoe, where we’ll stop and eat. The sun has almost fully lowered. The light is orange and gold, the sky still empty. It’s been such a beautiful day.

We think this was the last day of the summer, at the end of a summer mostly wet and cool that had stopped us from doing the things we’d planned. But now, this last day stands behind us. The most beautiful day, the most perfect company. In the future, we’ll talk about the time we went to Long Point, when Alex swam the freestyle in the lake for the first time, when he stood against the perfect blueness of the sky, and we threw the frisbee and stretched into the perfect clear air of the loveliest day of the summer.

Audio reading of this entry.