“Summertime and the living is easy.” Not. At least it’s not if you live here and find it a pain to have to adjust your daily life to the influx. Pretty soon it’s going to be time to limit our forays to the market, or anywhere else that requires driving, to midweek.

That this is going to be a big summer was made clear last weekend when restaurant after restaurant was booked for Mother’s Day brunch. We called four before rethinking our initial plan to go to Montauk or Sag Harbor, and finding one not only happy to take us but that had moderate prices: the friendly and affordable Harbor Bistro, which looks over Three Mile Harbor. It was bustling when we arrived, but wasn’t quite fully booked, apparently, only because folks weren’t aware that it had just reopened after a winter break. 

I enjoy the changing seasons, of course, but my feeling about summer is ambivalent. There are so many terrific ways to take advantage of it here, on and in the water, in the yard and in the woods, enjoying bounteous fresh produce and local fish . . . and, yes, the East End of Long Island is beautiful. But it’s far from a pastoral idyll, and that’s the problem: My childhood summers on my grandparents’ farm in the Catskills spoiled me. 

As faithful readers of this column might recall, my grandparents’ place wasn’t a working farm by the time they bought it, but it was on a dirt road with a dairy farm and a chicken farm the closest neighbors. I was happy to be done with school, of course, and to just be there with nothing to do — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say to be there finding something to do. 

Finding something to do. Is that becoming a lost childhood art?

A big, two-story barn with a metal roof, which was noisy in summer rains, was a hideaway with a buggy on its second floo,r where make-believe was easy. A rocky and cold brook, where it was easy to get your knees skinned, was exciting to wade in, and there were hills full of blueberries. 

Thinking back, I remember simply having fun by wandering down to one of Farmer Rowe’s pastures, where I would stand at a fence and look at his cows. I like cows to this day, but as a child I used to imagine that I would have one of my own some day and call it Petunia. (Observing cows — without even a parent there to record it with a smart-phone and post the images to Instagram. How many kids would find that a delight today?)

The owners of the chicken farm were parenting a granddaughter, who was older and tougher than I but nevertheless would invite me on occasion to help with something she was up to. One summer, I even helped her build a playhouse in a vacant part of one of the coops. And another thing: There were no ticks; at least we didn’t know about them at the time. (Deer ticks and Lyme disease, I’m told, have manifested themselves in that corner of the Catskills by now.)

The first chance I get, I’m going to tell my grandchildren some of these stories. They are, like all their friends, apt to be quite programmed this summer, with day camp and surf lessons and the like. I wonder if they’ll get it?

Leaves are starting to emerge on the trees outside my office window on the second floor of the Star. I get melancholy about this each year because they both cut off my view of the proceedings that go on in front of the East Hampton Library and because they signal that the off-season is coming to an end.

The library makes for good people-watching, something my mind probably tends to, given my profession. That I am no longer a reporter means that I am free to imagine stories about what and who I see, like a teenaged couple last week who first were clenched in a tender embrace then moments later exchanging words on the sidewalk. The boy appeared nervous about the whole thing, shifting on his feet from left to right and back again, while the girl gave him the business. What it was about I could not say, but it was hard to look away. 

I have been at this window long enough to have seen the Amazing Dancing Kid, who used to hang around waiting for a ride, grow into a more subdued young adult. When I first put my chair near the south-facing glass, he was a fast-spinning 10 or 11, with footwork that James Brown might have envied. Now, 12 years later, I see only hints of his glorious moves and even then only occasionally as he waits by the road.

The leaves shield the traffic, which, I suppose, is good. When the trees are full, only its noise indicates that summer is approaching and all hell is breaking loose. Still, I get a little sinking feeling knowing that the moment is just but weeks away when year-rounders start feeling like strangers in their own town.

Leaves on the trees mean that we have to begin planning our trips once we leave the house. For a visit to Southampton from our house in Amagansett we have to budget an hour, and we probably are still going to be late. Errands must be done early and not at all on the weekends. We half-seriously say goodbye to friends whom we may find difficult to see again until fall.

But the leaves also mean the days are longer, which provides time to spend with family or outdoors doing the things we like. What the leaves signify is not all bad, and in a few months they will be turning red and orange and falling again.

Min Hefner asked if I’d read the article in The Times’s Sunday Review section about the man who came late in life to tennis and advocated it as an ideal aid in extending one’s life. 

I said I had, but that he had left out the joy attendant in kicking opponents’ butts. I also did crosswords, I told her, to keep my wits sharp, just as my father did, though with all the questions having to do with pop culture and lame puns I find myself often at sea. 

In this respect, I told her I’d recently imagined that I was in a confessional, and that the dialogue went something like this:

“Father, I have sinned.”

“How so, my son?”

“I cheated this morning on the crossword.”

“Oh.”

“That’s it! That was the answer to ‘What is the name of the ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ actress with five straight Emmy nominations?’ ”

“Ah.”

“No. Oh. Sandra Oh. . . . Actually, I cheated twice. I also had to look up the Styx hit that began with ‘Mr.’ ”

“And what was the answer?”

“ ‘Mr. Roboto.’ Father, I don’t know why I do this. Saturday’s puzzle is the week’s hardest. I don’t know anything when I begin it, and, as I said to Mary, my wife, the other day, I don’t know anything when I finish it, yet still I must finish it. If the answers don’t come, I stare at it, stare at it for hours before finally yielding with a what-do-I-care. The problem is that once finished I can say, ‘Now, I can begin my day.’ And if I don’t finish it I can’t begin my day. Many’s the day I’ve not begun.”

“Well, you can begin this one by saying 10 Hail Marys.”

“All right. And, of course, I’ll try my best not to sin again. . . .”

“Yes, but don’t go just yet. What did you say the Styx hit was?”

“ ‘Mr. Roboto.’ ”

“Ah, yes . . . ‘Mr. Roboto.’ ”

“Will that be all?”

“For now, but perhaps you might feel better if you were to unburden yourself more frequently — every Saturday, say.”

Inasmuch as I often write my columns a week ahead, I’m at times overtaken by events, such as happened recently when just after I’d crowed in print that Mike Press and I were riding the crest of a winning streak, and thus gleefully kicking butt at the combined ages of 156, we were taken to the cleaners, a loss that at one point elicited from me an agonizing cri de coeur whose expletives were not deleted until they’d finished resounding throughout E.H.I.T.’s cavernous courts.

And so we were brought back to Earth. Albeit momentarily.

The other day, like many recent days, I was in a funk about America. The presidential race — angry, degrading, dumb, bafflingly regressive — was eating at me. Then along came an old friend to make America great again — or, at least a little better.

The person in this story can only be referred to as Igor. The unmistakable Slavic accent, the mixture of brash and tough and tender, the sheer, huge dimensions of the man. He is about as “Igor” as anyone could ever be. The only Igor I have ever known.

Twenty-four years ago, Igor’s career as a budding Yugoslav national team ski racer was cut short by the collapse of that cobbled-together nation. A bloody, brutal, neighbor-against-neighbor war ensued. Igor was swept into the war as a soldier on the Serbian side. He witnessed comrades and friends and neighbors killed, and within months he was injured, hit by shrapnel.

Igor’s a guy who’s looking ahead; he doesn’t dwell on the bad stuff. Questions about the injury and that dark time are delected with self-effacing dignity. “Friends were killed. . . . I survived. . . . I was lucky. . . .” Details have emerged in bits and pieces of conversation over the years, but he never divulges too much at once. 

Igor grew up comfortable, the son of college professors, in a leafy neighborhood in Sarajevo. As a kid he dreamed of snow-covered peaks, and when he was just 4, he strapped on skis and sped down his hometown Bijelasnic and Jahhorina mountains. Winter was the magic.

“I was born under mountains and introduced to sport of skiing by my father,” he said in an interview some years ago, his high-pitched voice unexpected from such an imposing eastern European, his sentences devoid of certain articles and pronouns, as if he’s a man in a hurry. “I have been in love with skiing since I was boy and have traveled from winter to winter all around world because I love sport.”

With his world in disarray there was nothing ahead for him in Serbia. So, at the age of 18, he fled home, leaving family and friends and a country in tatters. It would be eight years before he would see his family again.

“I took a car, the family car, and I remember driving away with my father on old bicycle behind us, waving: ‘Go! Go!’ ”

A friend, a pregnant woman, traveled with him. They shot across the Sarajevo airport runway that was the frontline, bullets whistling overhead and striking the pavement. They headed north. They passed scenes of war, bombed out towns and buildings, charred vehicles. He moved bodies from the roadway. He snuck through Europe — Austria, Switzerland, Italy — stealing food as he went, working odd jobs, checking his pride in the face of anti-Serb prejudice, borrowing floor space from friends of friends or sleeping in the open. 

Igor must have had an angel riding shotgun, not only because his story is so improbable and its contemporary chapters feature a wonderful woman and two adorable children, but at every turn he found astonishingly generous and powerful friends, and always new signs to push him onward, with skiing as the pass-key of his life. He obtained a passport and permission to travel from the former Yugoslavia, thanks to his standing on the national ski team and, ever after, skiing got him jobs, housing, recognition, friends. 

Igor landed in glitzy Monte Carlo — “I had my 501 Levi’s and my white shirt, which I washed every day, no matter what. That’s all I had, and my army boots.” With an irrepressible combination — sheer good luck, desperation, charm, passion — he landed a job coaching the principality’s ski club, and then its national team. He learned French — badly, but well enough. He met and befriended Prince Albert of Monaco, who it turned out was quite a skier himself. With Monaco friends, Igor established a successful summer ski camp in the Alps. In the summers he would head south to coach in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. He loved Australia so much he stayed for a few years and became a citizen.

Igor came to America in 1999, to western Massachusetts to coach at Berkshire East Ski Resort. He got one look at the place and remembers thinking, “Where are mountains?” 

One midwinter day, a friend recalled, Igor returned from a ski run and announced: “I have just seen camel!”

Turns out, he’d seen a moose. Welcome to America.

From Berkshire East, Igor coached at Mount Snow in Vermont, shaped and led a championship UMass ski team, and coached at Diamond Peak in California. We met in 2004, when he took over the reins at the Mount Mansfield Ski Club, which he proceeded to transform with the energy of a man possessed.

That’s how he met Micheline Lemay, a young coach with snowy mountains in her DNA. She grew up on skis in New Hampshire. I was at their wedding a few years ago — fittingly, on the winter solstice — at a chapel accessible only on skis high in the Green Mountains. It was a joyful convergence of United States, Serbia, and friends and family from far and near, including Igor’s mother, Lula, in from Serbia.

In the falling snow that day, Igor spoke with optimism like only a man who has been freed from hell can. He read a letter to the crowd about his journey and his search, and how he’d arrived here and met Micheline and found happiness. Then everyone skied down in the powder to a local tavern and rejoiced in the magic of it all.

Last month, Igor became an American citizen at a ceremony in Burlington, with Micheline and his children, Sofia and Hugo, at his side. 

Forty-eight nations were represented at the event, including at least one Bosnian. Burlington has a large Bosnian community, many of them refugees from the very same war that drove Igor away. Bosnians had once been the enemy. We’re all Americans now.

The federal officials conducting the event “called me Yugoslavian,” Igor laughed, “I liked that. It no longer exists, but that’s where I was born, Yugoslavia.”

He tells me he misses Yugoslavia, he cherishes it, the memory of it. And America? “I am married to an American girl, I have kids born here, I live here, I pay taxes here, I want to be here, and have my own home and land.”

He pauses, and adds, “America, it is the only way to go. Right?”

Right.

Biddle Duke is the editor of East, the Star’s forthcoming magazine.

Things lost and found have been on my mind ever since April 17, when my purse disappeared at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater. I told the story of that mystery on this page two weeks ago — and had no intention of revisiting it, until, on Sunday night at 11, we were surprised to hear the phone ring.

A young man at a rehearsal for “The Night Alive,” a play running for five performances at John Drew, between last night and May 22, was calling to say he had found my bag with everything intact! Whew. 

Theatergoers had been in and out of the John Drew in droves over the last few weeks, but the purse, shoved between a seat in the third row and an armrest, had apparently been hiding there all along, virtually invisible. Members of the Guild Hall staff and I had gone through the theater with all the lights on four times, to no avail. There was nothing to be seen until my caller walked along the row where I had been seated and jiggled one of the seats. 

I’d said all along that it was rather doubtful the purse had been stolen; after all, how many purse-pilferers are likely to have been in attendance at a Sunday-afternoon Q and A with Guild Hall’s artists in residence? But I had called the police nevertheless the night it went missing, to fill out a report and be on the safe side. When there was no news of it in the next few days, I did what had to be done: I canceled my credit cards, appealed to the Social Security Administration for a new Medi­care card and to AARP for medical and prescription drug cards, drove to the Honda dealership in Riverhead for a new ignition key, and weathered a boring queue at the Department of Motor Vehicles to obtain a new copy of my driver’s license. 

Given all the things one hears about the D.M.V., even that part of the saga was relatively pain-free (thanks, largely, to the helpfulness of the police officer who took the report and who provided me with the forms in advance). The silver lining is that I now have two sets of car keys and two driver’s licenses. My old Medicare card had been illegible anyway. And I also now have back the keychain holding East Hampton Town’s 350th anniversary medal, a favorite memento. 

At any rate, because I have been discussing things lost and found lately, this seems a reasonable place to mention the nine simple metal forks and six spoons I recently discovered in my kitchen. I don’t recognize them at all. I’ve put them in a small plastic bin in a kitchen drawer that holds other random utensils. I have no idea where they came from. 

We’ve all heard of teenagers on sprees breaking into houses to help themselves to the liquor cabinet and perhaps a snack, but as unlikely as Guild Hall purse-pilferers may be, silverware-depositing housebreakers are unlikelier still. We haven’t had a catered affair here since the mid-1990s, so it’s not that.

The grandchildren may have drop­ped a plastic spoon or fork around the house when they were finished with an ice cream at one time or other, but this is more than just a couple of forks and spoons: It’s practically a full dinner service. We maintain a small kitchen at the Star office, so perhaps I’ll bring them down to the office tomorrow and deposit them in a drawer, or . . . I wonder if the crew needs cutlery at Guild Hall?

Looking at three sparrows the other day at the water’s edge of Northwest Creek, I got to wondering about why exactly it was that anyone spends any time at all watching birds. 

Casual birdwatchers like me are plentiful, however, so there must be something to it. The Fish and Wildlife Service in 2012 estimated that about 47 million Americans consider themselves at least to have a passing interest. Its 2011 survey found that we spent about $900 million a year on binoculars and almost $1 billion a year on nest boxes, birdhouses, feeders, and bird baths. Those numbers don’t seem like much when compared to the more than $60 billion Americans drop each year on their pets, but still.

Knowing what a particular bird is has its attraction, I suppose, but then again it may be more of a statistical obsession than anything else. For me, it is less about recognizing the species than trying to grasp what it is doing, why it’s there, to get inside that tiny bird brain for a moment. 

As I watched, I noticed that the sparrows at the creek were picking along the wrack line, perhaps seeds, perhaps small insects attracted by the decaying seaweed and reeds. To think they might have migrated thousands of miles to be there at that moment, to find food among the leavings of a high storm tide. Did they know something to feed on would be there somehow or was it just chance?

Birds’ seemingly infinite adaptations are, for me, where the main interest is found. The Cooper’s hawk figured it out, evolutionarily, a long time ago. Unlike the birds of prey that soar, a Cooper’s will sit quietly under the forest canopy, blending in with tree bark, suddenly taking flight when it spots a potential meal, in its case, other birds. 

It was only after losing several of our chickens to them that I began to understand just how magnificently the hawks take advantage of their prey’s misplaced belief in the security of natural cover. Now, unless we are around to keep an eye on them, we keep our chickens inside a locked pen. Though we have not seen it again, the Cooper’s hawk, you can be sure, is watching us or at least watching our chickens.

Just when I thought I knew it all, I was blessed — yes, blessed — the other night to discover that I have a glaring weakness: I cannot hit, when receiving in the deuce court, a serve curved from the far corner.

Well, I can hit it, but not with any authority, and it is authority that one strives ever more for as one is in his decline. Sometimes, of course, authority is simply accorded, as when young people whose high school athletic careers I’ve followed and whose names I’ve misspelled for God knows how long say, “Hi, Mr. Graves” in passing, but among my mad dog Wednesday night tennis-playing peers there is no standing on ceremony, even in passing — especially in passing. They are out to kick my butt and I am out to kick theirs. 

At times I have even kicked my own, in the form of severe cramping of the feet and calves after I’ve played, the result, I’m told, of not having sufficiently hydrated.

I’ve said before that having reached a certain age drugs should be mandatory, and that was only partly tongue-in-cheek: We all need an edge, especially as we approach it. 

The pro I hit with in Mexico told me that the Gatorade I’d brought along was “poison,” more or less in the same ballpark as the Coke that he said was cynically peddled throughout Central and South America, and recommended that I drink lots of water instead. 

I’m not a great fan of water, except in its crushed-ice form in a Margarita, though I promised I would. He also recommended a diet of vegetables, nuts, and lots of fruit, a regime that I at this late date find to be more unattainable than sustainable, though I have been eating more apples lately, drinking a little more water, and have laid off the poppyseed bagels slathered in butter and the maple-glazed scones.

But back to the glaring weakness, my aforementioned inability to hit with any authority a serve that has pulled me off the court toward my backhand side. I think a two-handed backhand return is indicated, which will, of course, require work, inasmuch as I’ve always had a one-handed backhand. Lisa Jones, I’m sure, can help me in this regard. 

“There’s always something,” my stepfather used to say when it came to fixing things around the house. He said it not with a sigh, but with gratitude almost. It’s sort of the way I feel now. There’s something to work on, something to master.

Every election season there are one or two celebrities who threaten to move to Canada if their favorite candidate doesn’t get elected. It’s an idle threat because none of them follow through with it. I think they think us real folk will care that they plan to leave the country. But at this point there are far too many celebrities in the world, so to quote my father-in-law, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”

This year I’ve decided to move to Canada if I don’t get the gift I’ve asked for for many years on Mother’s Day, a rose gold Rolex watch. I hear it’s very nice in Canada at this time of year. My children are old enough now that they could have started a Rolex watch fund like the Christmas club accounts that banks used to offer and that beauty would be resting on my wrist, glistening whenever the sun hit it in a certain way.

Mine is not an idle threat. I’ve run away before, many times. But not from my children. It was when I was a little girl and my parents wouldn’t allow me to keep something I wanted to keep, a certain pair of boots, a stray dog, or an envelope of cash I found once that they made me take to the police station. I remember being just tall enough to see over the officer’s desk when he said that if no one claimed it within six months it would be mine. For six months I fantasized what I would do with my windfall, which, of course, I never saw again. 

When I ran away from home I don’t think I went far enough, or at least far enough for my parents to worry about me. Once I found a little kitten and my mother said there was no way I could keep it. With the kitten wrapped around my shoulders, I packed my bag with a change of underwear and a bag of cookies and said I was leaving. My mother looked more amused than worried. Probably because she knew I wouldn’t go very far.

The kitten and I ran all the way across the street to a grassy area on our neighbor’s lawn where we sat for hours waiting for my mother to change her mind. At dinnertime she sent out a plate of food for me with a side of canned tunafish for my little friend, but still wouldn’t allow me to bring him in the house. Later, as night set in and I got scared of the darkness, I snuck him in our garage for the night and returned to my bedroom, which was much more comfortable than the soggy grass spot I had chosen for my new home. And in the morning the ungrateful little guy had run away, never to be seen again

Since I’m old enough now to enjoy the comforts of home, I, too, will probably not follow through on my threat. But if there’s not a big basket of flowers sent to me on Mother’s Day on Sunday, someone’s in big trouble. And I will run away, right down to Gosman’s restaurant for a big, fat lobster.

Janis Hewitt is The Star’s Montauk correspondent.

Last week, when County Executive Steve Bellone proposed a surcharge on the use of public water to fund projects to remove nitrogen from groundwater — and subsequently the waterways — I was immediately reminded that Suffolk was the first municipality in the nation to ban the sale of household detergents. 

The year was 1971 and the environmental concern was phosphates, which were polluting the waterways. As states around the country followed suit, the industry began changing detergent formulas. What had caused the then-new Suffolk Legislature to act was foaming tap water. But not everyone was pleased with the county’s ban or the new detergents coming on the market. Some took to buying the detergents they preferred across the county line. The Suffolk County Water Authority sank deeper wells, and more properties hooked up to public water.

Today, the harmful effects of nitrogen are the targets. Instead of a ban (which apparently would be entirely impractical) government is throwing money at studies and proposing remediation. In East Hampton, consultants have recommended such installations as reactive barriers and bioswales, which are mysterious to most of us. Deciding where they should go and how to pay for them are issues, and doing something to help property owners upgrade old cesspools and inadequate septic treatment systems is being discussed by the town board, which brings us back to Mr. Bellone’s initiative. 

On Monday, a number of local officials as well as representatives of environmental and business groups announced their support. The South Fork’s county legislator, Bridget Fleming, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., and Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman were among them.

The proposed surcharge, $1 per 1,000 gallons of water, is estimated to bring in $75 million a year for improvement projects. Decisions about where the money would be spent is left up to the county under the proposal, making it entirely far from assured that the East End towns would be recipients of any of it. And what may be a stumbling block is that only those who use public water (from the Suffolk County Water Authority or the Greenport Water Department) would pay the surcharge, in effect, being taxed not only to help themselves but the thousands upon thousands of county residents who rely on private wells. 

The biggest obstacle so far is the State Senate majority leader, John J. Flanagan of Northport. He has been quoted as “unequivocally opposed” to the surcharge and has said it will be dead on arrival. It is notable that Mr. Bellone is a Democrat while Mr. Flanagan is a Republican. 

In November, voters in the five East End towns will decide whether to allow 20 percent of the money from the community preservation fund to be used for water-quality improvement.

 The lead story in The Star last week summarized ongoing studies of town water bodies by Christopher Gobler, a Stony Brook University scientist hired by the town trustees. He has identified harmful algal blooms in Georgica and Fort Ponds and evidence of bacteria in other local waterways including Three Mile Harbor. Phosphorus in wastewater, he said, continues to be a problem. 

Like many others here, I remember when our harbors were pristine, when we could assure newcomers that crabs from Georgica and clams from Three Mile Harbor were perfectly fine. I wonder when, and if, we will be able to do so again.

The dead whale that fetched up in the bay near our house at some point during the past weekend has drawn considerable attention, as dead whales do. 

I had first heard about it from Harvey Bennett, who left a phone message after spotting the floating carcass from across the bay. Baymen like Harvey know to watch for the workings of gulls, which are clues, if one knows how to read them, about what is happening beneath the surface.

From our staircase down to Gardiner’s Bay and through an old pair of binoculars, it was obvious that something big was out there, off toward Promised Land. Evvy, our 11-year-old, and I got in the car for a closer look. From the beach about a quarter mile east, we could confirm that the object was indeed a whale. Gulls stood on its exposed belly, probing for soft spots where they might find an easy meal.

It is difficult to say exactly what the fascination is, but my guess is that we humans are amazed by the sheer improbability of whales, their size, that they can live scores of years, that they can exist at all. Aside from the creatures that can be visited at aquariums, very few of us will ever have a chance to see a whale up close, unless it is dead and washed by the wind to a shore.

The arrival of an almost next-door whale provides an opportunity for me to point out that the body of water in which it rested is Gardiner’s Bay. Steve Russell Boerner, a part-time archivist at the East Hampton Library, and I have been preparing documentation for the United States Board on Geographic Place Names to correct what we see a misconception stemming from a 1956 fieldwork error, which has been repeated and now popularized by Google and other online mapping services. Napeague Bay, by which this section of water is frequently identified, begins a good distance off to the east.

According to the best sources that Steve and I have been able to assemble, Gardiner’s Bay ends at a line that can be imagined running from Goff Point roughly north-northwest to Cartwright Shoal on the southern tip of Gardiner’s Island. One interesting bit of evidence we have found is a resolution by the East Hampton Town Trustees in the late 19th century to hire a lawyer to deal with squatters on Hicks Island, which, as the record indicates, was said at the time to divide Gardiner’s Bay from Napeague Harbor. Today’s town officials concur, and we await the final decision of the place-names board.

Promised Land, where the whale was stuck aground early this week, is squarely in Gardiner’s Bay. My father, his grandfather Everett J. Edwards, and his great-grandfather Joshua Bennett Edwards would have known this. E.J. and Josh were whaling men and would have made quick work of the whale, I’d guess. Today, it is mostly a curiosity, if one that makes us think for a minute about things bigger and far more mysterious than ourselves.