(Note: “Five-Minute Friday” is an activity adapted from Kate Motaung’s blog. Each week, I use https://randomwordgenerator.com/ and write for five minutes straight with the word as a prompt, free-write style with no editing and no over-thinking.)

For several summers before we moved to Ohio, my mother rented a house on Sunset Lake in Alton Bay, New Hampshire, and my family (dogs included) along with my sister and her husband would spend a week, sometimes 2, enjoying the peace and quiet. (Sunset Lake is a much less congested body of water than Lake Winnipesaukee.) One of the perks of the house we went to most frequently was use of their kayaks, which we used to ride the perimeter of the lake to pick blueberries.

I am not one who typically appreciates the outdoors – or, rather, I appreciate it from behind the glass of a window pane, sitting on a comfortable couch, reading a book. But throw me in a kayak with some empty pint containers, and I can lose hours paddling around the water, navigating spiders and other insects that would normally send me back to the couch and a bestseller.

It’s not really about the blueberries, though I have a deep sense of satisfaction when I see the filled containers lining the kitchen counter. We usually freeze them and take them home for baking, and I still have several bags unopened from our last trip a couple years ago.