Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography, My Summer Office

I learned two things today.

The depth of my ignorance, and that late August rainstorms can materialize without warning just as suddenly as June's. And teenaged students more quickly provide more answers than questions.

EZ and me got to the office a little after 5:30. An afternoon in the high seventies, the sun was out and playing hide-and-seek with summery clouds. Fifteen minutes after anchoring, reading an extremely stimulating physics textbook, I became aware of dimming light. Overhead, a wide gray cloud had moved in and appeared not to be moving. All around, benign white fluffs shuffled; surely our cloud would lighten and the light would brighten so I could see words in a book again. Besides, the Weather Channel said nothing of rain, rather "partly cloudy and pleasant," nothing with "wet" in it. A little past 6:30 a fresh breeze stirred a few dead leaves onto the river. Along with a few superficial words to seek cover.

A huff of wind whisked through, shook the trees and flung a shower of leaves at the river. Splot. One dew drop then another bounced off the water, petty unauthorized renegades, escaped from the cloud and out on the lam. Everywhere else were sun-laced clouds with no misty veil indicating rain heading toward ground. Nor was there a dark looming blackness rising out of the horizon. Big raindrops became small but increased in number, sending out concentricity's, obscuring the surface, though still manageable and quaint, were irritating.

"This will pass quickly," I said to Joe, who'd run out of the woods and jumped into the boat at the ramp. He was squatted pouting on the floor.

It didn't. So I took out the umbrella and "whoomped" it open. Petulantly. Then started the motor and headed for shelter under the tree hovel.

So it rained. Then it rained harder.

I gathered backpack with schoolbooks and the briefcase around under my legs as Momma birds do with chicks under their wings. Rain poured down, deflected at first by the canopy of maples. Then the leaves all got drenched and drained onto us. EZ sat in the bow and didn't seem to mind. Water tracked down her back and streamed off her ears. But she's a stoic, only paced her space at first then sat still and blinked. For forty-five minutes we sat, what else to do? Thunder of a vague uninteresting sort rumbled five times. I was glad for a 60-inch umbrella, but even it began to drip from the struts after half-an hour.

At 6:35 I pulled anchor and began us drifting for the exit. Rain lightened to a drizzle. Nothing to do but go home. Legs and sneakers drenched, T-shirt damp. Out in the main river where I could see further, high-scattered clouds in every direction, but no retreating rain moving toward the east. The boat had filled with thirty or forty gallons of water and gurgled beneath the floor and, like an unintended visitor made our vessel unsteady. Then when I sought to gain speed all gushed to the stern and floated both gas tanks and everything else behind me. The bow rose, as it normally does before a plane is reached, but this time pointed at the treetops and gave EZ a towering view and an exhilarating ride. We finally achieved plane and the boat leveled out, rushing through sharp curves, me fighting the tiller and loose cannons, hundred pound waves crashing under my feet. All rain ceased when we got to the dock.

Resentful curiosity urged that I turn on The Weather Channel to see what the local radar would show. Especially since the highway had been dry and no rain had fallen in town.

It showed nothing. All of northern Wisconsin completely clear. At first. Then suddenly, as the animation worked through each frame, a tiny green blob, then larger, then yellow and green, red and green, about a mile in diameter, directly over my summer office. Then gone. Not sidling toward the east as is a rainstorm's custom.

First day of classes today. Tiny boys and girls, some still in diapers (so it seemed), and lots of brand new tattoos, Eagle wing-tips and gorilla faces peaking above panty waistbands and chain link fence gates circling ankles, muddy black and blue diagrams describing life for the victims of popular madness and thoughtless intent. What will they think at sixty-five still lugging around their hasty decisions forty-five years after the fad quit being fun? Piercings, eyebrows and belly buttons and tongues and other painful places will heal when it's no longer thought neat.

So American Government class met in room 204. A technology technician was at the front of the room making adjustments to the ITV equipment so the students in a room thirty miles away could participate too. Young people sauntered in, nervous, jittery, but trying not to show that they weren't and trying to verify discreetly that this was where they were supposed to be at 12:20 p.m. on Monday. I overheard the technician tell the girl on my left that the teacher wouldn't be there today (had to deliver his son to college) and that a woman named Theresa would present the first session. A woman in her early forties whom I've had in other classes arrived dragging a backpack on wheels and set herself up three chairs over in our front row. Then a young woman who'd been my algebra tutor in the spring sat down next to me. She's responsible for getting me through algebra at all, especially with an A. We spent much time trying to shove incoherencies into my brain, but by the time I'd get home to work alone it'd all leaked out. She was allowed by the instructor to assist with exams, in a private room away from the class. She was not permitted to help work specific problems, but worked through the sequences of similar problems, then confirm that I'd done it correctly or say I hadn't and show where I'd gone wrong. Tests took three hours, so did the final, and it all seemed highly illegal, but no so to the teacher who encouraged this cheating. An A was my course final grade. I needed intermediate algebra for university transfer credit, now I'm done with math and needn't fight with it again.

The teacher himself bustled up at 12:22, explaining that he'd driven hard to get back in time. He passed out the syllabus and went over each section, reading it aloud, asking if we had questions, repeating some parts. Enunciating each word to be sure we heard. His purpose was mostly legal disclaimer it seemed, so no one could get litigious when they got a C for not showing up.

Physics at 1:25 in the chilly dank basement. Nine students. All of them teenagers but me who's fifty in two weeks. The teacher, also my advisor, is a woman in her early sixties, a bit ditsy, gray hair, great runner's calves. And great fun, throwing herself into visual antics, leaping off chairs, flinging a Frisbee, pulling the nose off the drinking bird, saying "oh, yeah, I've got to glue that back on," as she's told her classes for years. The textbook we use is great fun, written by an ex-sign painter-turned physics instructor who has apparently reduced the mathematics and upped the comprehension for many beginning physics students. And having read the first two chapters I am exhilarated by what I've already learned.