A Cool Glow....

I stumbled across the website of Albany  based photographer Thea Coughlin yesterday.  We met at Squam in June, where she was the official photographer.  Throughout the days, I saw her, stylishly flitting from class to class, smiling a huge smile at students as if to ask, "will you smile back?"    It was so much fun to look through all the photographs that she took of Squam, which capture the mood of the place just perfectly.

These are pictures of me teaching outside of one of Deephaven's Ice Houses.  We made fast blind contour drawings of the place, and then fast embroideries of it, and when I asked my students where they wanted to draw next (the lake, the woods, etc.) they stayed.  We all were so taken by the architecture, the ice tongs, the special ice wheelbarrows, but mostly the way it FELT.  It glowed coldness.

Would you believe it if I told you that this house is full of ice that is harvested from Squam lake all winter and packed in Sawdust?  Would it be too good to be true if I said that fresh ice is delivered daily to the cabins that we all stayed in, along with fresh logs laid out to make a fire each evening in our stone fireplaces?  As I was packing to go, the thing I looked most forward to seeing was the ice, and I suppose the image in my head was of the ice box.  Here's a little view of ours (I love that it's a White Mountain, how appropriate for New Hampshire!)

To me, even more amazing than the fact that this beautiful little wooden box kept our beer cold all week long, is the fact that this beautiful house that looks like it was made for Cecily G, keeps a whole lake full of ice frozen all summer!  It's so delightfully amazing.  As I walked by this building on my way to the classroom I was teaching in all week, all I could think of was that it felt like it was emitting a cool glow.....and as a person who tends to feel hot in most situations, I loved it so much.  

What are you doing to stay cool in this weather?