Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography, My Summer Office

First trip of the new season.

Tense. Braced for a crisis to develop back behind us: trailer hitch drop its nuts, or the boat lift off and nose-dive an oncoming windshield. Or maybe a tire explodes and sends us fishtailing into a big tree. In January I made a change of vehicle from pickup truck to Honda Station wagon. The hitch was installed by early February (to beat the rush) and we are trying out its inaugural ball.

I pined during winter months, waiting for spring to come. Amused myself at work, devising preposterous boat improvements by studying the water sports department--a dusty four-foot section next to Automotive, displaying bilge pumps and rubber drain plugs. A bigger outboard motor--to get EZ and I to the office faster so we could get more work done--is still in demand but seems an imprudent idea. Our eyes might water too much and bugs would splat into them while going too fast and we might crash. The matter is still out with the jury.

The ice went out mid-April during a spell of global warming; algebra studies and work though, wouldn't free up time to go. Then the weather turned cold and drab, interspersed with afternoons to putter. What started as putting a tube in a flat trailer tire turned into: putting a tube into the tubeless other too, installing heavier new battery-charging wires, a new switch for the lights--with a stub of PVC pipe and cap to protect it from wet, removing the floors and eliminating accumulated debris, replacing the original--laughably inadequate--plastic anchor pulley with a new steel one that wasn-t broken, and lubing both wheel bearings. The stainless steel swivel seat bases I installed when building the boat were put in upside down, on purpose, because the three-inch tube gave a good rise, and I didn-t want to gouge big holes in the boat's original aluminum seats. But the rusting gobby welds were aesthetically displeasing and EZ often tripped over the ugly three-inch high pillar obstructing her playground up front. I got tired of tripping on it too, so hacked a hole in the carpeted plywood and gouged down into the seat. Shiny-brushed stainless steel is now face-up and pleasingly level the way God (who doesn't like unnecessary tripping into the river) meant it to be.

A shredded trailer roller was replaced. The motor's lower unit was drained and refilled with fresh oil, the depth-finder transponder--screwed to an artist 's canvas stretcher-strip and hastily spring-clamped to the transom five years ago--was bolted more solidly in place with stainless steel screws.

All was ready.

Oh. And I replaced the winch, which had a dangerously loose crank handle. And bought a new 60-inch golf umbrella. EZ will have to make do with the old yellow one. It's become an un-brella with a few rips at the crown and ineffective threads bare around the lower skirt.

I held my breath crossing the tracks. But everything followed fairly solidly and didn't let loose. The bow support on the trailer jiggled against the nose of the boat, but another click or two on the winch next time should tighten it nicely.

I made a discovery two weeks ago on a visit to the boat landing. A couple, bundled inside big parkas, was loading their boat aboard the exact same trailer brand name I was sold when my boat was new. Their boat was heavier and had a bigger motor, but their trailer was three feet shorter than mine and much easier to maneuver. It snuggled their boat up close to the hitch, rather than cinching it far back across a useless expanse of empty trailer tongue. When I bought it I didn't know a trailer from a trailer, and the guys who sold it to me apparently knew that. They loaded me up, and unloaded a white elephant, increasing their profit by 3 feet. Maybe I could use a hacksaw and cut out thirty-six inches and duck tape it back together.

By the time we got to the highway I'd told EZ to "be quiet" a half-dozen times and "lay down!" twice. (She knew where we were going). A tailgating garbage truck increased my tension.

Oh. And I'd put insurance on the boat and motor in the unlikely event of a tragic rear-ending, which--it turns out--is not covered by automobile insurance. It and the other maintenance improvements will be itemized as office expense deductions.

I waited while a wild-haired man on a motorized Velocipede blasted through the intersection. Then while a bewildered blue-haired lady in a Taurus rolled through and turned right into a beautician's salon, shattering the plate glass front window. I entered the highway and gained speed slowly, trying not to strain the Honda's four cylinders or provoke calamity from the automatic transmission. Down the long incline where the speed limit hits 55. The car did fine. EZ paced, but stayed discreetly quiet.

And I love her. Wind noise began hissing, but that's customary when a window is partially open to draw out an anxious man's smoke.

A pickup truck with an unlighted orange emergency light on its roof came fast into view, then drove close behind, sucked along in my slipstream. Sphincter muscles taut, though I didn't know it, then did know it, when they began relaxing two miles out. We passed Busy Fingers craft shop on the left and a driveway on the right displaying dozens of silhouette plywood cutouts of bears and raccoons, and in the shrubs a caricature '57 Chevy painted black with a man waving a black hand out of the passenger window. Through a slow curve and into a half-mile stretch, where chafing motorists passed at once so business deals could be clinched more timely.

EZ barked. The green lid sailed off the blue boat tote and set down in the ditch. Arms in the pickup truck behind me flailed. The orange emergency beacon lit up, casting a warning to everybody around. I slowed and pulled onto a side road, nonchalantly swerving for a dead deer carcass, and stopped. The emergency pickup truck stopped half on the highway, for effect, I guess, efficiently handling this urgency it's just witnessed. A car honked wildly and blasted past pissed-off in the far lane. I motioned to the man in the truck that was lucid, not hurt, was comprehending what has happened--the will is in order--and I am in control of the occasion. He got out and put on a blaze-orange vest, then reached back into the truck and flicked on some emergency flashers and cast out some flares. I turned onto the highway heading back, thanking my guardian and, with hand signals, promised to send flowers. Or something like that.

The boat-landing road was there as it was supposed to be. The driveway needed a road-grader spring cleaning, but the ramp had been thoughtfully shoveled free of sand, eroded onto it by ice pushing up and heavy rains washing down.

This place in the flowage is a wide watery meadow with an invisible deep narrow channel running through it. A river running through it, so to speak. But in spring, before anything much is growing, it's a wide-open lake and mostly uninterrupted, but for a few scattered stumps. From mid-June through fall it's easy to see where to go and where not to, because impenetrable walls of grasses and reeds grow up and won't let me rush into them. Except at night when I can't see.

Negotiating its May secrets is maddening. The depth finder is helpful only to confirm deep water when I am in the channel, and shallow when I am not. But by the time I'm not, I already know I'm not, because EZ is disgustedly being hauled back into the boat and the motor is shrieking and the prop is stalling by beating plumes of mucky sand out behind. So I drag the motor up to full tilt and unshackle the oars--which I forgot to mention are pretty Tractor Red and smell sweetly of new sprayed-on paint. (The oars were needed only twice. The second use was due to my refusing to accept that the deep water went left and not straight into a deceptively located bog.)

An eagle dove past, picked up a perch and struggled to regain height. I was pissed at it for catching so easily what I've tried for years to catch.

The rest of the commute was easier, within clearly defined riverbanks.

11:35 a.m.-

The boat slowed and curved into Sonbeam's Secret Channel like it knew just where to go. EZ, standing on the bow, scanned like a scout. Everything cold and gray and leafless--the water and trees and dull yellow grasslands--and I wondered why I've brought us here. Nothing is the same as the past seven months of winter memory said it should be. Even the passageway I'd whittled through overhanging branches a year ago was collapsed; the trees horizontally mere inches above the water. EZ, though shivering, is happy to be out here. At 12:25 she curled up against drizzle and I headed us home.