Independence Day 2023

On this day a year ago, I was counting fireflies with the neighbor's kids ages six and eight. The count had started off well enough; one, two, eight, twenty-five, but after thirty it launched into the realm of politicians with outlandish statistics. "One hundred and forty billion", shouted the six year old "One hundred and fifty gazillion" replied the older brother.

I've spent a lot of Independence days away from home. Last year it was a place I know well called Cold Stream Pond in Northern Maine.

Since the summer days in Maine are nearly Arctic in length, with dawn at 4 am and hard dark not until well after nine the chance to count fireflies is a welcome respite from the endless screams of kids swimming all day long in the lake.

The run up to the first fireworks across the lake is that time when the grilling is over but the coals are still hot and glowing, marshmallows and smores are normally the next step and perhaps not far off more screams this time for ice cream. 

All this noise just confirms it is indeed another wonderful 4th of July in the United States.

Somewhere past the age of forty I started to keep track of my July 4th holidays and it seems that more and more they have been spent in Maine.

In Maine the summer weather typically is reaching a high of maybe 70. Rare are the days over 80. So rare that I've been asked on many occasions "how you handling the heat?" when the outside temp was slightly over 85. But weather is not the only change-up in my Independence Day in Maine. You see in the Pine Tree state they've somehow added lobster to the holiday menu of hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans and corn of the cob.

The Burlington-Lowell 4th of July Parade is held each year in the middle of nowhere, at a "T" intersection that connects the towns of Enfield, Lowell and Burlington total combined population of about 2,200. yet the parade lasts for more than an hour.

The sound of firecrackers and chersynthum ariels that explode and echo across this small lake in Maine, a place where summer never really takes hold but merely lingers briefly and then slips back south. 

There in Maine the shorts and sandals I'm familiar with 9 months out of the year are replaced by jeans and long sleeved t-shirts. Not that it doesn't get hot in Maine, but summer here is not a way of life but a short break from the winter's icy grip. As they like to joke 11 months of winter and 30 days of lousey sledding.

There's just something about the smell of charcoal, and the randomness of bottle rockets, roman candles and aerial bombs, the skimpiness of clothing on teenage girls, drunkenness of middle aged men, and small towns trimmed with Red White and Blue that let's you know its July 4th in America.

But when you take stock of things  and notice the mile posts slipping by you often come to surprising conclusions. 

Somehow I have spent far more Independence Days away from home than I thought. In fact most of them over the last 20 years.

Right after 9/11 I was in Lucerne Switzerland where they have fireworks on the 5th of July. Once on a street well after dark I was met by an excited Frenchmen who asked if I was American who then proceeded to shake my hand enthusiastically explaining his father was freed by the Americans at the end of the Second World War.  

In Bermuda, where I've spent a number of Independence Days, fireworks on July 4th are a big part of a celebration of everything American. The Mid-Ocean Club whose members are more American than Bermudian holds a day long event complete with burgers, hot dogs watermelon and apple with ice cream abet "French Vanilla". 

The kids enjoy water balloon fights and three legged races while the adults participate in a golf tournament capped off with a pyrotechnics display that would put most small towns in debt for decades.

Over in Hamilton Harbour on the other side of the Island nation, I along with Mrs. Cedar once spent a July 4th evening aboard the SS Minnow owned then by Capitan Doug Shirley. There they have a Fourth of July fireworks display that rivals those I've seen in Charleston.

Many times perhaps a dozen I've spent our Independence Day in the Bahamas, or at sea underway a world away and still Independence Day is always epic.

A little closer to home my July 4th I often found myself working in Charleston with 30 guests aboard a large yacht while anchored in Charleston harbor.

One year our 4th of July guests guests turned out to be Jehovah's witness who stayed in their cabin during Hilton Head Island's Harbour Town fireworks display and daylong celebration. 

And then there are those summers from long ago that are not distant memories for some reason they seem like yesterday. And yet I must admit it was somewhere over the years Independence Day has transformed from a week at Cherry Grove just north of Myrtle Beach to more elegant surrounding of Seabrook Island or Kiawah extremes at both ends.

Funny how life has changed a Fourth of July in Cherry Grove on the beach to a 90 foot yacht somewhere off the coast of Honduras. 

But I long for simpler times, so for this year, the 247th Independence Day of our country, I'm going to just sit in my backyard and count fireflies.

All one hundred and fifty gazillion of them.