I haven’t told you any stories of the river this summer.

The first story was sometime in July. I didn’t bring my camera, which was a good thing. Iris and Akiva and I hiked in the river from where the path enters the river at the bottom of the big hill to where the river goes under the bridge on Shelburne Road. It took a few hours. The water went over my waist at times. Which is why it was a good thing I didn’t bring my camera. As it was, my one-week-old phone drowned. Which was also a good thing, in a way. I brought the phone for emergencies. The week prior, I decided to give my couple-month-old fancy-fancy phone to Martin. He appreciates the fanciness of it more than I do. So I bought myself a cheeper, less-smart phone to dunk in the river. After a week and a half in rice, the phone began to work again. It has some glitches— namely that it stops functioning in emergency situations— but it’s otherwise more-or-less unscathed.

The second story was a little while later, when we did that hike again. Iris was amazing. Absolutely fantastic. She wore her baby carrier and carried her doll Megan both times. Megan was just fine. Akiva, in his carrier, did not appreciate being dipped in the river while trying to nap. But since then, Akiva insists on hiking a lot and refuses to be carried for too long. So probably we won’t be doing that hike again.

For the next few stories, we started crossing the river to bushwhack on the other side. I let Iris lead. She picks out the best paths. She likes walking up and down little waterfalls, explaining herself and her view of the world the whole time. Actually, Iris never stops talking. Ever. She doesn’t understand why I don’t like to talk and eat at the same time. But that’s not really a story about the river.

The last couple stories about the river, we just go to the bottom of the hill, cross the water, and stop. Akiva is happier that way. On Labor Day, we met Finn and Lucy by the river. They were building a race-course for boats out of rocks. The boats were made of bark. I asked how long it took to make the course. They said about two hours.

Today we went down to visit Finn & Lucy’s boat course. Iris really wanted to see Finn & Lucy, but we just saw their course. We could see they’d been working on it some more. They fixed up the finish line a lot and tidied up the rocks. Iris spent some time sending boats down the course. You can see part of it in the foreground, at the bottom of this photo. The log to the right is the finish line.

Akiva, meanwhile, was off discovering the joys of peeing in the woods. He’d say “pee-pee!” then squat and pee. The first couple times it worked fine. After that he had to really try hard to get out a few drops. He now pees on command while naked in the woods. If only we lived in the woods, naked…