THE SLATE WAS SWEATING
Date / Moment: August 6, 2026, 8:15 PM
Location: Upper Watch
Type: Reflection
The day began warm, muggy, and partly cloudy. Thunderstorms developed later, and a couple of showers came through. Usually a shower cools the air. Tonight it did not.
The sun is down now. There is almost no air moving. The pond is placid, the trees are still, and the humidity remains. It is a typical summer evening, which it should be. It is August.
Before I got out of bed this morning, I could see condensation covering the outside of the southern windows—the windows facing away from the pond. The glass looked almost frosted. I knew then that it was going to be a humid day.
For a moment, the glass brought back the kitchen floor at the camp where I grew up.
The floor was slate laid over a concrete pad on glacial till. On days like this, we said the slate was sweating. As a child, I may have thought the water was coming up through the floor. I know now that warm, humid air was condensing on the cooler slate.
We would swim most of the day and come into the kitchen barefoot for lunch or whatever else brought us inside. The wet slate became slippery. It could take your feet right out from under you, and if you came down and hit your head on it, it hurt.
My mother—or whoever was there—would spread newspapers across the floor to absorb the water and give us some traction. We always had an abundance of newspapers. My father worked evenings in Saratoga and brought them home from work.
The newspapers started fires. They covered the sweating floor. We folded them into pirate hats, made swords from them, and fought battles.
The memory passed quickly this morning. Tonight, sitting on the Upper Watch in the same heavy air, it returned.