Ahhh, summertime. I find that the older I get, the more I reminisce about summers past; go figure!  Even though I occasionally manage to live in the present, looking ahead these days is often fraught with concerns about what the future holds for me, my dog and for that matter, the state of the world as we know it.

Little wonder then, that I often revisit the past, especially when it comes to recalling care-free sun-drenched days at the lake.

Ahhh, the lake. Seneca Lake, to be more specific—the largest and deepest of the Finger Lakes—and where I spent summers during the “wonder years,” when life-affirming core memories were made, and still live on in my head and heart.

Ahhh, the wonder years.  While some key moments in my life may have faded into fuzzy black and white images, those that center on lazy, hazy, joy-filled days at the lake remain vibrant, ripe for the picking, as it were, just like the grapes clinging to the vines throughout the Finger Lakes, now famous for being wine country.

As kids, we often snagged the low-hanging fruit from old man Wagner, who grew Concord grapes for Welch’s back in the day, followed by becoming a pioneer of the wine trail (www.senecalakewine.com) and who would sometimes shoot a rifle into the air to deter us from “stealing” a pocket-full per instructions from Mom.

“Bring some grapes home for the dinner table,” our mothers would yell as the screen door slammed behind us; my rag-tag posse and I trudged up the dirt road on our way to get ice cream or put pennies on the railroad tracks. While nervously waiting for a train to roar through and instantly flatten the coins, we were simultaneously thrilled and terrified, because we believed the urban legend that we could actually derail a train in the process.

If all this sounds like a scene straight out of film director Rob Reiner’s classic coming-of-age movie “Stand By Me,” that would be because his vision of what life was like for 12-year-olds in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s was dead-on.

Not unlike the kids roaming freely in Reiner’s film—which was based on Stephen King’s novella “The Body”—summertime at the lake was basically unsupervised, and my gang and I could get into all sorts of trouble without prying eyes, as our parents were off busy making gin-soaked memories of their own.

As an adult, I have more clarity as to what was going on behind closed doors, whether at my childhood home in Binghamton, or under star-filled skies at the lake, but it makes no nevermind, because virtually nothing can tarnish my memories of summers at the cottage, which still stands.

Well… almost nothing. While we kids spent summers with our moms at the lake, the dads would commute back and forth from home to the cottage, leaving us to our own devices all summer long. This made for an idyllic and peaceful existence, for the moms (IMHO) as well as their unsupervised children.

Ahhh, the cottage. Even though the place has long since slipped through my grasp, I revisit the cottage annually, because an old pal still has her family’s lakeside retreat right next door to our old place. While the cottage might be looking a bit wobbly, it would appear that the present-day owners are doing their darndest to preserve its rustic charm. Happy/sad—Yin/yang.

These days, I rent another, but similarly rough-and-ready place, situated directly across the lake from where I spent my youth, far enough away so as to not be haunted by ghosts of the past, but close enough to make new memories while still sleeping on the shores of “Lady Seneca,” an affectionate nickname used by locals.

“I think it’s why I live where I do now,” I explained to a childhood friend last year, as we sat lakeside by the fire, taking a stroll down memory lane. “It’s like summertime at Seneca, but different. I don’t know if it was a conscious decision, but life here in the Catskills reminds me of simpler times at Seneca, times I still yearn for, whether I know it or not.”

Ahhh, simpler times. It’s not the same of course. Nothing remains the same, a concept I still struggle with as I make my way down the beach at Seneca Lake during my annual September sojourn, picking up stray pieces of “Seneca Lake glass,” which still wash up sometimes after a particularly wave-inducing storm. When I was a kid, it was not uncommon to come across an old arrowhead left behind by the lake’s original inhabitants, but those days are now few and far between.

Ahhh, history. According to the Google, the lake is “officially named after the Seneca Nation of Native Americans. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) long regarded the wooded slopes and deep spring-fed waters as sacred sanctuary,” so it comes as no surprise that the lake is still considered both sacred and a sanctuary for folks like me, who return to it year after year, like the swallows of Capistrano.

The name “Seneca” comes from the Indigenous word “Assiniki,” meaning “place of stone,” and “regional writers often personify the lake, giving it a feminine title to reflect its beauty, life-giving nature and temperamental moods.”

“Regional writers.” I think that includes me.

My mother’s ashes are scattered in Seneca Lake, along with the ashes of several beloved dogs, my brother-from-another-mother, his mother, his brother and more. When my time comes, I want my ashes to be scattered on the same waters. Meanwhile, I’ll take what time I can get, which only amounts to a week or so each year, but that only makes time spent at Seneca Lake more precious.

Yes, I feel incredibly fortunate that we have so many beautiful lakes right here in the Upper Delaware River region, but the Finger Lakes will always be home to me. I still look forward to seeing Lady Seneca come into view with the same eagerness and sense of childlike wonder, reflecting on how I was fortunate enough to grow up under her spell. I’ve never taken that magic for granted, and I find that still holds true for those of us in the original posse, those who still gather to “bask in the glow,” as my mother would say, of lazy days and glorious sunsets on Seneca Lake in the good old summertime.

For more information, visit the Finger Lakes Tourism alliance at www.fingerlakes.org.

Fun Fact: “‘The Wonder Years’ is an idiom used to describe the formative years of childhood and adolescence.”