In which summers did the loons on Skein Lake raise no chick at all?

The hottest Fourth I can remember up here: 96 on the thermometer by the boathouse, and the lake down a good foot on the dock posts. Nobody slept. The children were in the water from breakfast until the bats came out.

David and Julia have set the date: October 6, at Estes Park, outdoors, at 7,500 feet. I said it sounded lovely and R. said, "Bring a coat."

I told Mom about Sogndal on the telephone, all of it, the ledger and the farm. She was quiet, and then she said, "She never talked about it. Not once."

No loon chick this year. The pair sat on the island nest in May and came off it; Bev says the black flies drove them off, and they did not try again.

The week of the Fourth. Twelve of us. Maeve is four months old and spent the fireworks asleep on R.'s chest in the green chair. Lucas, nearly three, has learned to say "walleye" and says it to everything that comes out of the water, including Owen.

No loon chicks. A strange male came in May, and the two fought for the better part of a week out past the island, wings going like oars. Bev watched through the binoculars and says the old one lost. The new pair never nested.

Fourteen. All of us in one place for the first time: June is a few days short of a year old and had never seen her cousins except on a telephone. She was passed down the dock like a bucket at a fire. She walks if she has the porch bench to hold. Theo, four, has appointed himself her interpreter. Hannah is thirteen and spent a good deal of the week on the swim raft with a book, not wanting to be looked at, and came in every evening and dried the dishes beside me without being asked.

R. fried the walleye sitting on a stool. His knee is bad now. I watched him work out how to get from the grill to the table without the three steps.

No loon chick. It rained nine days in June, the lake came up over the nest, and they did not try again.