I’m always conflicted Labor Day Weekend.  On one hand, I am happy for summer and the canoe livery to be over for the time being.  Fall is my favorite season.  I’m eager to get back to the classroom.  On the other hand, I love 10 PM sunsets and the very idea of the endless summers of my childhood.  I vividly remember my dad taking my sister and me home to put us to bed while it was still light out, begging him to take the backway home (Jose Rd.), Erica and I exhausted from a full day swimming in the river.  We lived the river all summer long.  At 10, I distinctly remember walking downtown Omer during Suckerfest in early April, fixated on how unfair it was that it would be close to two months before I could swim in the Rifle again.

As of late, I watch and notice how my niece and nephew enjoy being kids growing up at the canoe livery.  Each year brings forth more long-forgotten childhood memories.  This weekend, my niece and a friend took tubes to the end of the road and floated around the entire campground back to our dock.  My friends and I did this countless times at their age.  To be 10 again without a care in the world!

Earlier this summer, I overheard kids discussing what I grew up calling “rocky.”  It is a simple game.  All one needs is two people, a tube, and a body of water.  Two kids sit across from one another on the tube and lock legs, bouncing as hard as possible to knock the other kid off into the river.  Our river version required a short walk upstream and had a natural time limit.  We would walk the short, sandy straightaway upstream leading to the dock, the object being to knock the other person off before we reached the dock.  My sister Erica, our cousin Abby, and I spent countless hours playing various versions of this game, leaving the river waterlogged with suits and hair full of sand.  I am grateful that, in spite of all that has changed in the last 30 plus years, I still live in a world where children are still allowed carefree summers.