The day looked so favorable, I gathered from the camper everything that needed a good

rub-a-dub-dub. By the time I bring out the second load, the sheets hung first have turned into rope

streaming horizontally from the clotheslines. Ordinary boxer shorts are whips that slash across my face when

I walk injudiciously among them.

Dave's jeans appear to contain their owner plus twice the 20 pounds he's so proud he lost since

the first of the year. Secured to a line by three pairs of clothespins, they dance and kick and leap to the

tune of a fiddler I can neither hear nor see.

A pretty little denim vest loses two silver buttons to the wind. A careful search of the lawn turns

up one; the second is gone.

I no sooner turn my back on a couple of towels when they flee across the grass. Only a

strategically planted wall of pine trees prevents their reaching the dirt road and freedom. Little do they know the

road goes no farther once it passes the cottage. Pinned again this time folded nearly a third over the line

they settle contentedly to the rhythm of the wind and snap like flowered terry-cloth flags.

At home, I wouldn't dream of hanging clothes out so higgledy-piggledy to dry. My mom brooked

no carelessly-hung laundry. Said you could tell a lot about a housewife by how she hung her wash.

Sheets together, towels together, shirts by the hem, underwear in order his, mine and hung

shoulders (thereby pinched into little points), or socks hung by the cuff (thereby stretched out unattractively),

I "tsk-tsk" mentally and conclude that a bachelor has hung his own wash.

But today, in these gusts, I have had to rehang fugitive Fruit-of-the-Looms and

unmanageable unmentionables so many times, I'm now simply throwing them across the line and pinning

whatever surface I can grasp. Socks? Never mind; those I'll drape on the string in the camper's shower stall.

Lines twang around me, sheets strain to escape, pins lurch out of my grasp. I'm suddenly reminded

of a calamitous sailing trip that ended, for me, with my worst-ever case of seasickness.

Laundry affixed to line for the moment at least, I retreat to the camper for a soothing cup of tea.

I hang socks in the shower while the kettle heats; outside, the wind buffets the tall sides of the vehicle.

I sit and sip, watching the clouds form and re-form into monsters, and wonder if a wind strong enough

to break our host's flagpole it did, earlier in the summer could blow over a small motor home.

It's trying, heaven knows. A vent clatters, the skin rumbles, but the car itself rocks pleasantly, like

a sailboat on an easy reach. From the stillness inside, I watch tiny yellow butterflies working in

a neighbor's field of clover. Until they move, they are indistinguishable from the hawkweed,

dandelion's cousin, growing amidst the clover. How can they hold on in this tempest?

Last evening at twilight, we watched a trio of foxes move cautiously from the edge of the

brush, daring each other to approach the cottage where they know scraps have been thrown out to tempt

them. The air was so still then that we had to stay behind the glass or become a meal to marauding mosquitoes.

Not a breath stirred as we watched. One fox sat like a puppy, his lush tail stretched alongside;

another scratched his ear without enthusiasm.

They'd move closer, then retreat as though at play, dashing a few steps, but still far from the safety

of the undergrowth.

We watched until it was too dark to see. This morning, the crusts were gone.

The hawk is still at work over the beach. No gulls in this frenzy, nor crows. Only a couple of

jays brave the bluster at the top of the lawn.

I guess I'll rinse my cup and go corral our wayward underwear.

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