My own private Idaho.

Okay, I'm pretty sure I've used that title before, but I'm too lazy to check, so it'll have to do. We're on our way in the morning up to the family cabin in Island Park. This time, it's me, the historian, college daughter and running son; over Labor Day, we'll add in a daughter and a son and their respective spouses, but subtract college daughter, who will be--that's right!--at college.

Even though I'm taking my laptop and will have some work to do, the thought of doing it up there, of taking walks and maybe seeing a western tanager or an eagle or a moose, of making a fire, maybe, of sleeping easily the way I do up there--all this seems heavenly.

So, there's late water soaking into the ground so nothing dies while we're gone; plum jam finishing cooking before I put it into jars; teenagers downstairs arguing pleasantly; the historian in his study, doing something at his desk; and my head buzzing about what to take, what last tasks to do, and what to forget till we get home.

And when I get home--or at least the night before we come home--I will feel like this: