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Wednesday, July 3--

8:08 p.m.-

The humidity lowered early afternoon when a front moved through and elevated the mood.

We are in the wide lake by town, bobbing in the lee trying to accurately hit the right keys. We were forced to cross from one side to the other because this is where I wanted to be, out of the sun. High swells rocked the boat; EZ trotted staggering in circles like a kid on a funhouse trick floor. Approaching a narrow opening I first heard, then saw, a low slice of speedboat roar by, propelled by a brute souped-up car engine and a solo fat man in a white undershirt doing eighty in the twelve-inch high craft. A few minutes later he whipped past again with two guys with wispy ponytails, bouncing and jolting high over wakes, Confederate and skull & crossbones flags streaming from back transom spars.

A single engine airplane is out of sight behind the tree line. No! It's an airboat, driven by a gentle man named "Pinky" I've met at work. His boat is twelve feet long and skipping along about forty-miles-an-hour. Pinky steers from a tall seat near the back, wearing headphone-style hearing protectors. A young woman passenger is up, front shading the sun from her eyes. A six-foot diameter cage encircles the prop. Spray vaporizes into sunlit rainbow behind.

They circle an island and head back straight at us, curving slightly to exit the bay. Emotion wells up as they pass by, combinations of awe and respect, maybe delight for the small wave he gave.

[Later, in September I saw him in the hardware store and mentioned seeing him on the lake back in July. He told of selling the airboat, but was planning to bring his bigger other one back home to Wisconsin when he returned from Florida in the spring.

"That one does a hundred miles-an-hour. You can take it out for an afternoon next summer."

I'll let you know.]

We got on the water about 3:30. Headed for Grand Sandbanks to see if any sunflowers were sprouting.

No. Not one. Mosquitoes swarmed mobishly and got me itching before I succumbed to bug spray. Then I sat sweaty, hating the oily feel of bug dope, so said "to hell with it" and joined EZ for a swim. Submerged to eye level, I watched Pastel blue and green damsel flies, about an inch long, locked head to stern in the act of mating, move fast an inch above the water.

8:30-

The sun is gold on the eastern shore of town, a half-mile away. Trees are sharply defined as though etched by an artist who knows depth-of-distance precision. Kids are shouting and--Oops here comes roaring twelve-inch-high boat dick. He's alone again, must've bucked out his buddies. I suspect the neighborhood doesn't like him. So far, he's only gone full-speed from one end of the lake to the other, around a bend, then back near to the far shore.

9:25-

Halfway to the landing a heavy gray fog is rising on shore and drifting out across the water. A man in a white dress shirt walks slowly backward through his yard, blowing mosquito poison out of a fogger machine. The pall rises to the height of the trees and envelopes acreage a quarter-mile on either side of his home, and out over the lake. Do his neighbors approve? Is this legal? Air molecules move indiscriminately wherever they want. The insects and birds and dragonflies and bats (that eat mosquitoes) and Mayfly larvae have no way to say they disapprove, so dwindle and die by the millions right here, and along Maryland's marshes and Dublin's rural wetlands where populations of frogs sprout anomalous malignancies and die. But a man wielding Monsanto's chemical convenience can live easier while grilling chemical meat over a fossil fuel flame.
I'll bet the lake breathes a long sigh after sunset when the chaos goes home and lets it rest. Tomorrow it'll be ripped and bloody by midnight. Fourth of July, like the white belly-up carp floating five feet from us, interior red fish flesh shredded by propeller blades.