WOOD. WOOD. WOOD.
Yes Water is wonderful. But so are trees.

For many years Ellen and I have been blessed to have been able to spend many a summer week's vacation at Woody and Karen's country house in Maine. It's a veritable paradise of natural beauty and splendor on the banks of the Penobscot Estuary and the house, guest cottage, dock,(plus tennis court!) and surrounding woods is a sumptuous feast for the senses. My memories of the days and nights spent there are filled with countless moments of family fun and shared friendship. During a more recent trip there I came across a book in their library. It's called Reverence for Wood and was written by noted Landscape Painter (Hudson River School style) and Americana history scholar Eric Sloane. The book was a revelation to me. Here's the text of the inner flap:

The special knowledge of which wood is suited to which task, the ready identification of native trees, the reverence for wood, the instinctive knowledge that wood can warm the soul as well as the body -- these virtues of a bygone age are revived in Eric Sloane's remarkable work. Heavily illustrated, with a section on identification of nearly sixty native trees, A REVERENCE FOR WOOD provides an illuminating view of the resource that made possible so much of the early settlement of North America.

http://www.amazon.com/Reverence-Wood-Eric-Sloane/dp/0486433943

For anyone interested in the astonishing saga of how an immigrant population landed in a wild and endless forest and by their own hands developed the skills and knowledge to harness nature's bounty to create their homes...and ultimately their entire communities and cities...this is the book to read. It's short and beautifully illustrated and it sparked a flame in me that continues to this day as I dabble away on weekends attempting to tame wood into forms for the most modest of uses.

In other words...Trees are the shiznit.