Summer friends. They have a feel and ease that simply isn’t replicated in friendships from other times in the year and other parts of our lives. Is it the warm weather, the geography of a small spit of land on the coast of Maine, or just people being different during the wonderfully free two to three months of summer? Who knows? But almost to a person, folks, regardless of age, on Juniper Point seem pretty sure summer friends are different.

First there are the boomers. Ones like Carey Swope and Cammie Beattie, who converse in deeply-rooted Juniper Point-speak that leaves those of us who’ve been coming here for only 25-35 years befuddled: houses identified by the names of owners 40 years ago, intrigues of teenage summer romances including those that ended in marriage, parties in the Rubicam’s boathouse, and an unspoken closeness burnished by decades of growing up together, raising families together, and getting old together.

The millennials are another case. You can feel the boyish energy when old tennis buddies Carl Dooley, Will Barton, Aaron Bloom and Patrick Wilkenson come every year in early July. More broadly, porch parties in the mold of generations past spring to life as (now-working and free-time-starved) summer friends take up an old tradition. Again, memories come to the fore of teenage parties in what had then turned from the Rubicams’ to the Kites’ boathouse. Commenting on hugging friends good bye at the end of summer, Kate Swope says “Summer friends are like cousins”—you know that you’ll be out of contact for the long fall-winter-spring stretch, but that next summer you’ll pick up where you left off, just one year older.

Then there’s the alpha generation. Katherine, Abbey and Clare Taylor, who hold down the central meeting place for the middle school age kids at the tennis courts and Community House, say summer friends are surely different. Kids mix across ages so they easily have summer friends that are three years older or younger than them. Boys and girls? No problem; where they might stand on opposite sides of the gym during the school year, here they all mix up. Plans are minimal, freedom is maximal, making kids more adventurous. Nice day? Let’s go swimming off Moore’s landing or tubing behind a motor boat (if they can talk a parent into driving). Raining? Just hanging in the Community House always works.

And nothing speaks to continuity like the wobbler generation. I already have a vision of the current two-three year-olds, Tyne Hanley, Mia Phibbs, Ameilia Modor and Esmé Wilson running around the Point together in a few years. 

Lest I ignore the more recently arrived summer dwellers on the Point, Anne Markette reminds me how easy it has been to make summer friends. Admittedly, she says she had to come out of a 30-year tennis-playing hiatus and agree to enter the vice president to president track of the JPVIS, but these ventures together with the close-knit Rock Road crowd brought her into great friendships too.

I close with a snapshot of the jam session/sing-along at the Community House last Thursday evening. Friendship was on display. Bring your own instrument or just a voice waiting to be heard ran the announcement. It was a pretty free-wheeling event but leading it were Tim Hankins on banjo with a bluegrass tilt, David Rooks on the guitar who seemed proficient at anything, Kendra Davis on the guitar who both carried the group and made sure the kids were involved, Leslie Lipschitz on the guitar with a bluesey bent, and Louisa Rossano the lovely soprano with her harp. Each one of the multigenerational group of 30-40 found something that resonated—summer friends enjoying music together.