Sunday, August 19--
5:10 p.m.-
After a ten-day delay, accounting for cold blowy winds and a sun setting
rigorously sooner each day, we are once again settled in our office at large.
The late afternoon sun is hot on my neck but the air is halfheartedly 70.
EZ is lying with her head on the gunwale, dreamily gazing south at the sound
of crickets "creeking.
Now past mid-August, the time after work is eager with hurry. Get home
quick, pet briefly the urgently needful dog, pack up the cooler, verify contents
of the briefcase, hurl out the door with EZ barking with glee. (She knows
when we're heading for the summer office: the hat on my head and armloads
of familiar accouterments are her clue.)
She leaps in the truck and braces herself. I hook on the boat trailer,
get in the cab and drive illogically for my age. Through routine streets and
over the tracks, stop at the plaza for gas, then onto the highway. Five miles
north we turn onto the side road, EZ starts barking for me to hurry-hurry,
onto the boat landing road, gravel crunches rustically, we're nearly there!
Circle around to aim the boat at the lake, into reverse, and it floats
off the trailer. Park the truck and we run. No time to waste, summer is almost
gone. Our departure through the NO WAKE section is less courteous than usual,
into the main channel and give it the gun. Reeds and grasses and old moldering
logs whip past our sides in a blur of diversion. Enter Sonbeam's Secret Channel;
the water is higher than it's been in two weeks. Through Dippity-Do and under
Crescent's Mayhem, we reach our main office, then set down the anchor.
Now what?
The sun, though high, is racing downward, to shut off our light and
turn us dead cold. Winter is nigh, there's no time to lose.
Pull up the anchor--we've got to do stuff! Hurry too quickly through
Neanderthal's Clutch. (That's where the upper channel gets too narrow for
fast running, though I do anyway.) The motor drags, then stops against the
sandy muck bottom. In urgency's curse I give it my best, pull up the motor,
grab a brace of upended roots and shove us out through the bottomy goo. Lower
the motor, start it again, swipe at my brow and reenter the fray.
A cluster of maples leans onto the water where the secret channel meets
the main stream. A squeezed little opening, but I've been using it all summer
and know right where to go to avoid stumpy bumps.
"Clunk," the motor tags one abruptly, but keeps pushing
us out.
Into the main river we sigh with delight, then rev it up fastest, to
get us there quickest. Our goal is Sandy Flats just around two minor bends;
we get there promptly and shove onto shore. EZ springs away onto the sand
bank; I sit in the sun and ponder a swim. But the breeze is chill, funneling
air from the Arctic. I break my rule about not beering until six, open one
and pour it into my teacup at five-after five-thirty, rinse the can in the
river and bump my hand into an iceberg. I decide to decline swimming. Even
EZ, who always wades right in, is hugging the bank, refusing to touch toes
in.
7:45 p.m.-
Going home, Rufus greeted us from afar, tied to the trailer, crazed
with "helloing."
A man fishing from shore inquires, "Did you leave any fish
for me?"
"All of them!"
Returning to the boat landing at sundown, I meet a man named Arnold
launching his boat. He's in his late sixties, I know him only from these encounters.
His boat is tiny and battered, and up until this year he used only oars. He
doesn't go far, just in the near shallows, interweaving open areas. This year
he's gotten a small electric trolling motor, but mostly he still uses the
oars.
I tie to the dock; he parks his truck, then walks over as I say, "getting
a late start tonight."
"I just got back from Richland Center. It was my birthday on
Friday, and I got these new lures and want to go try them."
He holds up a splay of blister-packed bright colors. Poppers and Beetle
Spins and look-alike minnows with groupings of treble hooks screwed into their
bellies. He's like an eight-year old kid, excited and full of, can't-wait-to-play-with-these-new-toys.
"They gave me a new boat too, a used one with a fifty horsepower
motor! My other kids gave me a riding mower, you can see it in the back of
my truck over there," he says pointing. "I've always had to push
one. It was a very good birthday. I have to get the boat registered tomorrow."
"Well, happy birthday. And good luck!"
He heads for his escape to the lake.