Mondaugen's Law

Careening

Career and careen differ by one letter. In my life, that has been no coincidence.

Last month, I took a job as Project Director at the Maude Group in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. I’m still trying to figure out what the company does, but it has to do with design, experience, China, Panama, Peoria, and communications. It’s a good job, indeed, though with one disadvantage—my family is still in Bridgewater, CT and will be until May of 2010. So I have a long commute.

And thereby hangs a tale:

“A Knife in the Dark” is the catchy title

We all know we can’t bring knives, explosives or other weapons on airplanes. Even if we don’t intend to use them, other passengers might become alarmed. But how many of us have arrived at airport security to discover we have neglected to leave all our weapons at home? Too many of us. After 9/11, I remember the huge bins filled with confiscated toenail clippers. I lost a pair myself that way. Nowadays it’s large bottles of water, hair gel and creamy cheeses that cause passenger alarm, so they’re banned too.  But I digress.

Last weekend on my way back home to Connecticut, I arrived at airport security convinced I was clean of all possible causes of passenger alarm. Ready to suffer mild irradiation to provide evidence I was clean, and calm my fellow passengers, I began undressing in line— belt off , jacket off, shoes off (I’m really not looking forward to the first “underwear bomber”), laptop out of bag, change out of pockets… and there it was. Instant recognition of the object and situation left my stomach queasy. I had forgotten to leave my grandfather’s pocketknife at home.

Now, it’s a special knife. I never met my grandfather, who died 11 years before I was born. Family stories about him are few and far between. So it’s through a few objects I keep him in mind, mainly this knife that I was given as a teenager. It’s a 1930’s stainless steel fishing knife made by Abercrombie and Fitch. It has always been a little rusty at the joints (steel pins hold it together), but it takes a keen edge and has proven handy on many occasions. It’s lovely design and connection with my grandfather made it a special object.  I was not going to let it go without a fight—though not at any great cost, since I’ve got too much Scottish blood.

The security people would toss it (or take it) without a qualm. I couldn’t risk trying to hide it in my bag (or toss it above the metal detector as I walked through, catching it on the other side a la Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda), since I figured the odds were towards losing it. But what to do?

I had a good hour before my flight, so I put my shoes, belt and jacket back on and retreated from security to explore options. I presented my dilemma to a Department of Homeland Defense fellow. While sympathetic, he had no solutions except to ask at my airlines. Armed with the knowledge that I could not possibly be the first, I approached the Southwest Airlines ticket counter attendant. She listened to me cooly then replied absent-mindedly in monotone legalese that they could not take responsibility for objects left at the airport blah blah blah. How could she not feel my pain? My only consolation was that she had to live with her own dead eyes.

The airport has no lockers to keep the knife. No post office to send the knife. Nothing. For a moment, I considered paying a taxi to drive my knife back to my place of work where a friend could get it, but the Scottish blood kicked in.

With half an hour before my flight, I came to terms that the knife was a goner. It wasn’t so hard: it’s just a thing, an object ultimately meaningless in itself. Its value was really in the family associations, which I had with or without the knife. A replacement knife would do the same job—reminding me of the knife that used to remind me of my grandfather.

And then it dawned on me. Hide it in the airport. If I hid it in the airport, I had a chance of recovering it. I could pick it up on my way back three days later. Sure, someone else could find it, but hiding it offered better odds than throwing it away. With 25 minutes before my flight, I started to look about for a good hiding place.

Airports are rather intentionally public places. There aren’t a lot of good nooks and crannies at Midway. I went outside to look there and found cops and maintenance workers standing around. It seemed a bad idea to obviously place something in a nook or cranny in front of a cop, so I went back inside and kept looking. Where could I put it? It grew into a complex problem. I couldn’t draw attention to myself when I placed it. I couldn’t put it somewhere that it would be found over several days. I would probably be watched on a security camera wherever it was.

Then I found the place. A ladder against a wall with a ledge up top.  It seemed perfect. I looked left and right suspiciously to see if anyone was watching. Then climbed the ladder and tucked the knife out of sight. Then I climbed back down, looked left and right suspiciously again to see if anyone had seen me, just like in the movies. I knew how to act like a suspicious character.

At security, I undressed without a qualm, walked through without a beep, and dressed on the other side without a worry. I made the plane in good time.

It was on the plane that I thought back to the ladder. If someone had placed it there, they might use it there, and thereby find the knife. And when I got back, would the ladder still be there? My perfect plan began to unravel.

And the security camera footage would reveal a tall, 40-year-old white male, short blond hair climbing a ladder and putting something on top of a ledge, looking around suspiciously the whole time. Any dolt of a security guard, except in Hollywood, would investigate.  The plan came undone. So I resigned myself to losing the knife and put thoughts towards getting home.

Three days later back in Midway airport, I had to check the spot. The ladder was gone, of course. So I put my bag down, looked suspiciously to the left and the right, then I clambered noisily up the wall. There, right where I left it, was my knife. I jumped back down with a broad grin on my face, stuffed the dangerous memento in my pocket and made my way to the taxi stand before a security guard watching the video footage waddled after me to ask tough questions.

Safe in the taxi, I fancied a career in the CIA. Surely I have the right stuff.

It was only a few days later that I considered another option. What if I had picked a random stranger leaving the airport, told him the story and given him the knife? Whether the stranger would keep the knife or send it to me was of less importance than creating an odd and beautiful connection. Instead of throwing it away and ending it, the gift would certainly have created an unusual memory for that person, whether he kept it or not. I enjoy telling peculiar stories. Such a moment would have created one for the stranger to tell.

Well, maybe I’ll forget the knife in my pocket again next weekend.

A bridge over...oh I can't do this any more

The Penobscot Narrows Bridge in Bucksport, Maine is the first place I've visited that does not offer a coherent, understandable experience. You arrive expecting not-quite-sure-what, you experience a jumble of things that do not make much sense, and you leave uncertain what you were supposed to have felt or learned. And they charge out-of-staters $8 for it.

I've wanted to take up the Bridge's clear lack of emotional focus with the Maine Tourism Board, but then I'd have to fight my way through the non-rhotic accent to understand anything.

"Mayne Tou-ism Bawd. Yawr ques-chun?"

"What?"

"Eye ass, whut whus yawr ques-chun?"

"What?"

"Suh, if yoo dawnt have uh ques-chun, cahwl back laaa-tuh."

"What?"

So I didn't bother.

My visit to the bridge, or I should say bridges, has been a personal Waterloo. It's the first time I have not been able to write a coherent blog about a location, and I squarely place the blame on the location not me. Consider that I can find pretentious delight in the little things on a lake in Bridgewater without breaking a sweat. On a beach in Maine, over-wrought soul searching comes to mind without any effort. Even my desk offers itself up to a geeky fascination with odd words with a flick of the keyboard. What could be so hard about a bridge?

I've thought the problem might be an inherent mixed metaphor, that the bridge is a synthesis of two conflicting  emotional foci. This can lead to problems, though often humorous ones. If I were to discuss the word "spiffy" (an odd word) while on a beach in Maine (the proper place for over-wrought soul-searching), the results would be ridiculous. I'm not sure I could even think of the word while skipping a stone in stony (haha) silence. Even attempting it would probably induce a mild stroke.

However, you might parry, I am always capable of overwrought soul-searching, whether on a beach or at a desk. And I concede your point. There is a certain universality to overwrought soul-searching. It can even be done at the mall, in the Abercrombie and Fitch for example, in spite of the raw buff lust coursing through the place. There are fundamental differences between overwrought Maine-beach soul-searching and overwrought-desktop or mall-Abercrombie-and-Fitch soul-searching, but I won't offer a digression into them as I'm not currently seeking tenure.

You nay-sayers are insisting that I've just missed the true mood of the bridge. It's there--just too subtle for my coarse understanding. But let's see if you can figure out the proper locale-focus, the inherent mood of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. I dare you to name it.

Let's begin at the beginning of the experience.

From a distance you see two bridges over the Penobscot River (I apologize that I have no such image, but look here for one, and some less biased history of the two bridges). They're right along side each other, not more than a hundred yards apart. The first was completed in 1931 and the other in 2006. While you can only drive on the new one, the other one is still there. They cheat each other of attention and beg to be compared and contrasted. So you stop the car, get out and look and try to understand.

The old bridge is a big, all-metal suspension bridge. From a distance, it looks frail, even cobweb sparse. Up close, it still does. Only two lanes wide, there isn't much of a guard rail on either side. There's a distinct sense that you want more bridge than offered both under and around you to get to the other side. Driving over it is a close as most of us will get to an Evel Knievel stunt, soaring across nothingness to reach the other size of a canyon. And it looks uncharacteristically beefy in my photos since they added extra cables and a walkway in 2003.

The new one is not just big, but huge. I mean really huge. It's twice the height of the old one (though about the same length). Instead of lacework arches holding gossamer cables, gargantuan stone obelisks hold sewer-pipe-width cables. As if to exaggerate the proportions, the new bridge is still only two lanes wide. At a distance, it looks close. It's a jaw-dropper by scale.

One is Modernist Egypt and the other a Bandaged Erector Set. Who could write anything coherent about such an ill-matched pair? You might as well build a Louvre in the Middle East or put a pyramid in the center of Paris.

Now add to your growing impression of the bridges that the new one has "the tallest public bridge observatory" in the whole wide world. Stunned? I was.

You might think that honor would belong to one of those upstart Asian countries such as Indonesia, Dubai or France where they're always in a frenzy of one-upmanship with America. Even the Chinese can't compete with the plucky Bucksportians, and only hold the title to the "next-tallest public bridge observatory in the world." We may have lost first place in manufacturing and humans rights abuses to the Chinese, but we stand strong in the construction of super-tall public bridge observatories. Some patriotic applause is appropriate here.

So of course I had to go to the top of the tallest public bridge observatory and observe. One more thing off my bucket list. Once set with this goal, however, further confusion ensues.

As you drive over the bridge from the North, you note the clean bases of both obelisk pillars. There are no doors, no signs, nothing. You drive completely over the bridge and wonder if you missed anything, though you haven't. How does one gain access to this world-famous observatory, you might wonder, as you drive by a big sign indicating the direction of Fort Knox (isn't that in Kentucky?), a mile or so North of the bridge. If you're really perceptive, you'll note a small indication on the Fort Knox sign that the observatory is also located in the direction of Fort Knox. To get to the observatory, it seems you have to go to Fort Knox first.

At the entrance to the Fort Knox parking lot, you have the option of visiting Fort Knox for $3, or visiting both Fort Knox and the observatory for $8 for out-of-state residents. Slick flatlander that I am, I did some simple mental math.

"How about $5 for the observatory only?"
 
"Naaaaawwwwwwh" said with a big smile. The drawled response was friendly but betrayed full penetration of the ruse I was attempting. I paid my $8.

"Go awn down he-ah, and then ovuh th-ea," the lot attendant told me, indicating a road that headed back towards the bridges but down by the shoreline.

There we found another parking lot and a doorway in the very base of the Southern obelisk of the new bridge. Eureka! Access from below, where nobody can see it.

Walking under the two bridges makes you look up. Bright sunshine makes you squint. It's hard to see much of anything on a sunny day, but what you do come away with the sense that 420 vertical feet is a long way up. You also realize that these bridges have nothing to do with one another and look really awkward set so close.

The elevator is smooth and efficient, a marvel of modern engineering. The door opens at the top and looking out you see nothing but blue sky and horizon. I takes a moment to realize the windows are floor-to ceiling and only about 4 ft. from the elevator door.

"Oh lordy" an older woman in the elevator exclaimed. We ventured out of the elevator and up a small stairwell right up against the glass to get to the top level of the observatory. The glass panes don't give you much reassurance and the railing is thankfully on the concrete interior of the stairwell.

Once in the observatory, you have an unbroken, 360 degree view of the land all around. This is surprisingly boring. It's an unbroken and mildly hilly forest of green in every direction all the way to the knobby horizon. The river is not much more interesting, a muddy calm thing that gets thinner to the north North and wider to the South. Bucksport is a tiny town with not much to look at, though there is a factory of some kind on the riverfront. After a minute or two, you realize it's a really boring view on a clear day and the 1931 bridge below is the most interesting thing to look at, though for about 45 seconds before you realize you could see it better from below. One last thrill--press your nose up against the glass and look down for a frisson of vertigo. Then it's time to go.

The tallest public bridge observatory in the world, fully 420 feet off the shore of the Penobscot river gives you the most spectacular view of nearly nothing: an unrelenting uniformly green canopy of leaves too small to distinguish 420 ft. up. They built a super-tall public bridge observatory to observe exactly what? Why bother? Then I recalled my $8 and wondered if I'd fallen for a 420 ft. tall tourist trap. My daughter, who is usually unimpressed by these things, was unimpressed.

As I climbed into my car, after looking up once again at the underbellies of the two bridges, the only thought that came into my mind was "huh?" and "I want my money back."

Perhaps they really did built it thinking there was a great view. Perhaps I'm insensitive to the loveliness of unbroken green canopy and a riverside factory. Perhaps there's delight in being able to look down on one bridge from the top of another bridge. Perhaps there's charm in not being able to get to the bridge without going to Fort Knox first. But all I come away with is a huh.

Some Time on the Beach

There are places on the seacoast of Maine that make you glad to be alive. A field of blueberries. A view over a saltwater bay. Low-lying fog in the morning that dissipates as you drink your coffee. Given the time to look, the peacefulness of the views can saturate your soul. All sense of time and responsibility fade into an endless desire just to be, and perhaps to contemplate. The smell of the sea, the salt tinged with the decay of vegetable growth and former sea creatures, is responsible for the contemplative nature of the coast. It seems to add sincerity to the beauty all around.

Everyone loves the seashore. Fully half the world's population lives near it. However, some are more pleasing than others. The Maine coast is inhospitable, wild, rugged, even mildly frightening. It offers sharp rocks instead of sand. Black flies, horseflies, deerflies and mosquitoes patrol the rocky beaches and utterly infest the swamps and forests nearby. Swimming in the cold water is for the hardy or inebriated. Yet Maine's attraction is equal to the languid beaches of Southeast Asia.

Seashores are neither solid land nor uncertain sea but the line between. The shore is a place to wait, a transition on a journey. The land falls into the sea. The sea claws at the land. While we can be distracted by local color, we eventually peer at the distant horizon and boats between, examine the flotsam by our feet, and walk their length in silence. The features of a particular beach are often irrelevant to the state of mind they put us in. We think to the future and the past, losing our sense of the present.

In a bid to avoid going to war, Odysseus tilled the sand on the beach of Ithaca to convince King Agamemnon he was insane. Agamemnon placed Odysseus' infant son in front of the plow. Outwitted, Odysseus stopped, revealing that he was sane enough to go to war. Afterwards, he spent ten long years trying to get home, prevented by an angry Poseidon. Odysseus visited many islands; but whenever on land that wasn't home, he tried to get back to sea. And when at sea, he sought land. The beach was the beginning of Odysseus' voyage to war. While his journey didn't cost him his life, it cost him 20 years away from his family.

While I've never tried to till a beach, I oddly feel at home on them. I enjoy walking the shore line, between land and sea, on the property of neither. It's the rocks that catch my eye. The textures and features of the larger ones are fascinating. I pick up hundreds of the smaller stones for closer inspection. If they're round and flat, I skip them. If they're less than met the eye, they go back on the beach. And if they're curious, I keep them. And of course they make me think of time.

Each rock began its history somewhere at some time. The one I hold in my hand might have started on a beach, where mud and sand collected in layers over centuries, compressed and pushed slowly down into the earth, thousands of feet down, heat and pressure building, compressing, melting, reshaping it into new rock as other pressures push the old seabed up above the water into a new mountain chain, the topmost parts crumbling away over the millennia, finally this one piece breaks free from the rest to lie on a beach, rolled in the water where I find it, still sharp if recently freed, rounded by waves otherwise.

Nothing much human matters in geologic time. In each rock's history is more time than humanity could ever contemplate. These rocks have all been to hell and back, so to speak, over many millions of years. What they could say, could they speak.

Staring at a stone takes a certain amount of madness. Wanting it to speak requires more, though that's a fair metaphor for the science of geology. But I'm not after rocks that tell me their composition. I'm not sure what I'm after. But I keep picking up stones and thinking about them. Perhaps this impulse is a natural version of a Quaker service, a silent meditation, a waiting for a response from the silence that isn't you.


The intersecting lines suggest a natural Mondrian

A millefeuille pastry set in stone

A most perfect shade of slate in a very smooth pebble.

A natural plimsoll mark

Red, green and purple

Such ponderous thoughts are hard to avoid on the Maine coast, though I'm sure I bring them there. As evening falls, with a gin-and-tonic in hand and a pile of stones on the bench next, it's hard not to feel a happiness that dispels heavy thoughts about time travels and death. But the best antidote is to take the kids to the beach. There you can smile as they pickup every last damn rock, shell and bit of driftwood and run back to you with them for safe keeping. Heck, they're not lost in contemplation. They're just picking up stuff because it looks cool. Maybe there's a lesson here.

A short explanation

I should explain something that has puzzled some readers of this blog.

They've asked "where's your wife and kids?" They were hoping for more of a family story about what we all did in India. Instead they get insane tales of climbing up to waterfalls and island lumberyards with no cute kids in sight.

I've kept our family adventures largely off the blog for many reasons. The main one is that this blog is fully open. Anyone--friend, acquaintance or total stranger--can read these stories (and I encourage every last one of them). I just think it's unfair to share too much family life with such a wide audience. I'd rather that my daughter didn't have to ask "You told a perfect stranger WHAT?" or "You broadcast THAT over the internet?"

House guests are not so lucky. We have hundreds of hours of video and millions of photos that we freely share with guests, often until they fall asleep on the couch or leave the room muttering. You've been warned.

Some more travels

Travelers are wretched by nature. They leave the community in which they have a place, to visit ones in which they do not. In these unfamiliar communities, they rely on traditions that respect the stranger, and guard against the traditions that don't. Rest is only ever partial and trust more often built on hope than knowledge. The traveler's joys are solitary emotions, impossible to share fully in spite of tales and pictures. They are strangers moving among strangers. Return to the original community to be known again is never possible, for communities thrive on shared experience. While away, the traveler changes in different directions than the community. The traveler brings only the uncanny back with him: interesting at arm's length, but ever threatening to those who remained. Travelers are wretched by nature.

And yet travelers are the happiest of people. They leave the burdens of community for the freedom of the road. Every step is new and fresh. As the traveler moves from place to place, every problem can be left behind and forgotten and every joy recorded and remembered in some way. Every new place offers unexpected excitement and challenges without the weight of any responsibility except the personal. Traveler are unburdened while seeking hidden joys, and so they are the happiest of people.

There is no synthesis of the happiness and sadness of traveling. Traveling is a coin, not a Moebius strip. But there can be resolution for the traveler. While there is no return home, there are new homes only among other stopped travelers. There is community among people who no longer belong to their origins. Travelers form a third culture, neither the one they left, nor the one they visited, but something between composed of portions equal to the time spent in each place.

How few of us live in stable, unchanging single community? How few of us remain untraveled? How few of us have not visited much of the world virtually through films and books? How many of us consider the traveler to be suspicious instead of a curious new person to visit? So we are all travelers, awkward to some degree in defining just what community in which we're a member. With our doors and windows open to the rest of the world, our houses are losing definition, breaking into fragments of communities. We belong to a church, a club, have a job, know our neighbors, and have our friends and each defines a totally separate micro-community. When switch jobs, we lose one work community and move to a new one. We are all travelers, whether physically mobile or not, wretched and happy to the extent we can feel comfortable in our current set of communities. I always hate it when I find opposites are really much the same thing.

And when I spin too much of this thoughtful and pretentious nonsense in an attempt to bring sense and humility to my mind, I engage my feet in a good long walk out of the house, down the driveway and past the people who know me for better or worse.

And so I shall start telling travel stories again: some actual, some imagined, good ripping yarns, ponderous self-indulgent sludge, amusing fluff and the occasionally plain-spoken tale. I promise to post at least once a month. And I hope you tune in again.

Green Dragonfly

It was during a second canoe trip on the murky waters of Lillinonah that a green dragonfly landed on my arm and stayed a while. Only when I reached for my camera, did it fly away.

We started early, the sun still low. Not a cloud in the pale blue sky. The landing dock was empty except for a few bass boat trailers. The canoe slipped in the glassy water without fuss or haste. Load with gear and family, a push with a paddle, and it was. Land, roads, cars and parking lot forgotten. We were a little molecule of four on the blankness of the lake.

We hugged the shore, stared up at old forest. White oaks, hickories and maples that reached branches down to the water. Crisp green leaves, brilliant reflections of the sun, every shade of green in the canopy. Water a matching flat green.

In places the overhanging branches were tall and long enough to glide the canoe under. Tucked under the leaf canopy at water's edge, out of the sun's heat, cool forest colors, deep browns, yellows and reds. Brushing against branches, bewildered spiders fell on us, groggily made their way off.

We startled a blue heron who flew soundlessly from the forest. Indifferent to us, he pointed like an arrow to a spot across the lake where he already was. We waited, then he was.

A red fox fled a garden along the lake edge, not too quickly for we paddled slowly but kept him in sight. He paused and looked back often. He wanted us to follow, it seemed, and show us a place that we didn't understand.

Behind a canopy of trees, an old stone wall meandered down the shore slope and directly into the water. Cut in two by Lillinonah the Reservoir, old fields were no more. Now forested above and watery below, only the stone walls spoke plainly of the past when we tilled the earth and planted crops in a stony valley with a stream at the bottom.

The wall there wasn't right, a behemoth stranded and forgotten, perpendicular to the shore, a broken neck pose, no longer separating any place from any other. What the wall said made me sad. But the wall had not crumbled into random stones. It held.

But perhaps a stone wall is something different. Perhaps it is a representation of one stone moving through time. Each stone is a memory of the stone at a certain time. The wall indicates the stone's direction. This stone had meandered through a forest, or followed a line prescribed, then fallen in the emerald water, perhaps to drown, perhaps to reach the other side, perhaps to remain at the bottom where it could be assured of not being disturbed. Or worse, perhaps its intent was utterly alien.

We passed docks and lawns, power boats and jet skis, well maintained and ready to make their owners happy with a thrill ride down the lake and back again.

Then the dragonfly landed. First it perched next to my son. I called his attention to it, but if flew away. Then it landed on my arm, near my shoulder. My daughter turned and stared at it with me. I think it stared back, manifold eyes. Its wings twitched. Its green iridescent body and arms were immobile. Its eyes gathered information. It rested. Each wing twitch was a frame in sequence.

I loved the moments I look at it.

Then I reached for the camera to capture the moment. The dragonfly was off in a clatter of wings.

Princess Lillinonah

Last Sunday was lazy and hot. My kids loafed about the house looking miserable. Something about messing about in boats from The Wind in the Willows crossed my thoughts, but I didn't remember it fully. So I borrowed a canoe and took them to the closest navigable body of water, Lake Lillinonah, to mess about, dispel the August blues and help me remember what it was in that book.

As we drove do to the landing, it dawned on me that in the 27 years since I moved to Bridgewater, I hadn't been out on the lake. Now you might ask, "27 years???" Well, you may ask. But I have reasons. First, consider the many New Yorkers who have never been up the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. Consider what local attractions you have never been to, Mr. and Mrs. Smarty Pants. When you live there, it's not as special somehow.

And, Lillinonah was not exactly a great attraction. It was a horribly polluted, opaque, soupy green lake, filled with curious debris. Cars, bodies, refrigerators, pesticides and fertilizers, children's toys, plain old garbage, industrial effluent, and the waste of hundreds of lakeside households all congregated in the lake to sit and stew. As an impressionable teenager I was told "you'll lose your tan if you swim in Lillinonah." So I never did.

But after a two years of swimming in Indian rivers, without apparent ill effect, Lillinonah didn't seem so scary. And tales were told that Lillinonah had improved, that the paper mill upstream had been brought to heel, that the nitrogen and phosphorus levels were only really high, instead of off the charts. And over the years I'd noticed many more boats, water skiers and swimmers in the lake. How bad could it really be?

At the landing, we watched power boats zoom by trailing inner tubes behind them, small stern-looking children holding on for dear life. Well, if those parents allow their kids in the water....

"I'm not swimming in that" said my daughter. I looked down. The water looked horribly polluted, an opaque, soupy green. There was some curious debris floating just beneath the scummy top layer. I scanned for a pair of headlights shining from the deep murk, but didn't see any.

"You don't have to, dear" I replied, sliding the canoe in, wondering if aluminum would corrode in this stuff. Another power boat roared past, only fifty feet from the landing, spiffing across the crests of the previous boat's wake, another stern-looking inner-tubed child in the wake, holding on for dear life.

Lillinonah is an artificial lake, the results of a dam that filled a long, winding valley. The lake is rarely more than a few hundred feet wide, but it's miles long. So the power boats zoom up and down, in line, turn at the top, and zoom back. On a crowded Sunday, It looks rather like a highway, boats in either direction up and down the long thin lake. I suddenly had a vision of cars on the highway trailing stern-looking kids on little carts. They zoom up, take an exit, get back on in the other direction, then zoom back. There didn't seem to be much difference between the two activities, except the water.

Our town's landing was on the Eastern edge of a section that ran North-South. We launched our canoe and immediately were bounced in the wakes of the power boats, nearly upsetting us. The kids were thrilled.

"Let's do that again!" called my son.

"I'm sure we will," looking down the lake at the nearing power boats.

With two inexperienced paddlers in the front, and nowhere particular to go, our canoe's path was less than linear. We went this way and that along the edge of the lake, mock-arguing about technique, laughing, dueling with the paddles and threatening a capsize at each turn. The powerboat wakes turned the canoe into an amusement ride, bounce, bounce, bounce. Debate raged whether is was more fun to hit the wakes head on or sideways. The August blues had been dispelled. I began to feel a bit like Ratty.

The West side of the lake was a steep forested slope and looked worthy of investigation. Getting to the other side in a slow canoe, however, would be a bit of a trick, akin to walking across highway traffic. We waited for a relatively calm period, no speeding boats in sight, and struck out across the lake. Paddle paddle paddle. Then to our left and our right, the roar of incoming announced our doom. Paddle paddle paddle paddle. The boats came at us surprisingly quick. Paddle paddle paddle paddle paddle. I could see the whites in their eyes and they still seemed to be coming right at us. Paddling seemed hopeless, so we stopped to watch the oncoming doom.

Vrroooooooom

Vrrrrroooooooooom

Giant, new motorboats with gear strapped to the sides and sunglasses-clad families in bathing suits passed on either side of us, at a safe distance it seemed, each with a stern-looking kids on an inner tube in tow. The wakes then hit us from both in front and back, tossing us unpleasantly in an arrhythmic manner. Recovering, we paddled on and made it to the opposite shore.

Here, in the shadow of the Western hillside we were out of the sun. I took off my big, goofy Indian Safari hat. It doesn't look very Indian or very Safari. I just bought it in India. And the style it comes closest to is Safari. It's hard to describe. We must have made a sight on the lake. Two kids waving paddles about, mostly in the air, sometimes in the water. Old canoe with layers of peeling blue and red paint. Tall fellow in goofy hat.

We were also out of the wind, the water was far more calm. And stinky. The proverbial flotsam and jetsam clogged the still waters, from tree limbs to chips bags it was all there. My son found a football, in good shape, and picked it up. Who needs Walmart? We found half a canoe, floating nose up. Probably split in two by a collision with a speedboat. We poked around for bodies, but only stirred up mud. Mostly we found murky green water.

As we paddled along in the penumbral darkness, repeatedly bounced by the powerboats' wakes, I recalled the story behind the name Lillinonah and told it to the kids. She was an Indian princess who fell in love with a white man. It all ended up messy, with an angry father and double suicide at a place called "Lover's Leap." (for the full story, try here). Lover's Leap wasn't too far from our paddling spot. So I took the kids there. In the sheer rock face jutting out of the lake, they instantly saw a mournful face in the rock. After a moment, I saw it too. It truly looked like someone calling or moaning up to the heavens. The eye and mouth were both fissures in the rock. The princess or the man? I wondered.  As we got closer, we could see a bunch of empty beer cans in the fissure that made the mouth. Maybe she was thirsty.

As we paddled back towards the landing, we glided slowly over a large mud flat, our paddles mostly pushing us along, the lovely sounds of plants brushing along the canoe hull, a sound that instantly transported me to summer camp in 1974, canoing in a Wisconsin lake.

Out of my reverie I was startled by an approaching powerboat. A young couple sat at the helm. I was about to wave them off, considering how shallow the water was, when they promptly got stuck in the mud. The driver's solution was to rev his engines to a high whine, sending a huge rooster tail of mud and water up in the air, partially back into his boat. We paddled slowly away, not wishing to get involved. A few minutes of screaming engine, though, and he freed the boat. I don't think his girlfriend was impressed. It was then I noticed the markers outlining the mud flats. They'd driven right past them.

We glided up to the landing close to sunset, no longer buffeted by the power boats. All was quiet as we pulled the canoe out of the water, cleaned things as best we could, and got going home. In the car, as my daughter played with the radio volume and my son tossed his newfound football about, I thought.

"Kids. When we get home, I want you to jump in the shower immediately. No messing about."

You shall know a word by the company it keeps

Please consider this list, copied from Benjamin K. Shisler's Dictionary of Phonesthemes:

•  /sp/ (1/5) Spit, Spew, Reject: spew, spit, spittle (saliva), spat, spurn (to reject with disdain; refuse contemptuously; scorn; the act of spurning; a kick), spout, spurt, spirt, (issue in a jet, squirt), spatter, spattle, spirtle, sputter (to spit or squirt from the mouth with explosive sounds), spawl (spit coursely), spurtle (burst out, squirt), spat (start up sharply), sput, spung, spong, spume, sputum, spill, sparge (to make moist by sprinkling "the gentle rain ~ed the parched fields"),

It's sad, no? Consider the poor, innocent sound /sp/. What does it mean? Nothing by itself. How can /sp/ be bad in itself? And yet look at the company it keeps. All those nasty words centered round the concept of spitting, spewing or rejecting--a sort of out-from-the-inside motion cluster. It forms such icky words, it must be icky.

Mind you, I was named Strother Purdy. SP are my initials. So the /sp/ sound is my native turf and my sense of self worth rises and falls with it. Let's quickly move to the next list and look for some better members of my sound family. they must exist:

•  /sp/ (2/5) Speaking: speak, speech, spiel, sputter, spill the beans

Again, we find in speech that sense of out-from-the-inside motion. Words come from inside people and are sent into the world. I don't think of speech as nasty, so perhaps /sp/ isn't a nasty, vomit-tinged concept altogether. However, sputtering isn't the most elegant form of speech so there's little solace here.

The third list is a set of nails in the sound's coffin:

•  /sp/ (3/5) Contempt, Blemish: spam, spud, sped, spic (slur for Spanish American), spazz, spoof, special, spy, spendthrift, spoffish (fussy, bustling), spoffskins (a woman with a dubious sexual history who shacks up with a man and poses as his wife), spotty, spoiled, spent, specious, spurious, spinster (bachelorette), spintry (male whore), spitball, sparse, spare, spot, spall (a small fragment or chip especially of stone; to break off chips, scales, or slabs; exfoliate; to undergo spallation), spatchcock (a bird split and grilled immediately after being killed; to prepare a bird like this; to interpolate a phrase; to add by interpolation; a hastily constructed argument), speck, speckled, spackle (powder mixed with water to form a paste and used as a filler for cracks in a surface before painting, to apply spackle),

What a motley crew of words your mother never wants you to speak.
The one word that sticks out is "special." Then again, when I was growing up, "special" had a positive connotation and meant something a cut above. Now, if you're labeled "special" in public school, it means something else. So in fact the word doesn't stick out that much after all.

The fourth grouping:

•  /sp/ (4/5) Spikiness: spine, spike, spire, spur (a pointed device secured in a rider's heel and used to urge the horse; recognition and reward for achievement; a goad to action; stimulus; something projecting like or suggesting a spur; a projecting root or branch of a tree; a stiff sharp spine (as on the wings or legs of a bird or insect); one on a cock's leg; a gaff for a gamecock; a hollow projecting appendage of a corolla or calyx (as in larkspur or columbine); climbing iron; a ridge or lesser elevation that extends laterally from a mountain or mountain range; a hasty impulse; to urge on with as if with spurs; to incite to action or accelerated growth or development; stimulate; to put spurs on), spear,

Well, sharp, pointy instruments that impale things aren't too bad. Makes me feel strong, masculine, but somewhat red in the face.

The last list:

•  /sp/ (5/5) Energy, Life, Jet Movement: spang (spring, leap; to a complete degree; in an exact or direct manner; squarely), spank, spunk (spark; spririted courage; punk), spong (comic sound effect), speed, spice, spirit, spite (petty ill will or hatred with the disposition to irritate, annoy, or thwart; malice; to treat maliciously; annoy; offend), spark, sparkle, spangle (a small plate of shining metal or plastic used in ornamentation esp on clothing; small glittering object or particle; to glitter as if covered by spangles; sparkle), spawn, spore, sperm, spasm (a sudden, violent, involuntary contraction of a muscle or a group of muscles, attended by pain and interference with function, producing involuntary movement and distortion; a sudden but transitory constriction of a passage, canal or orifice), spartle (flounder, kick, or flail about),

SP, the spartling and spicy spirit, spoffily spanked the spunk out of the, oh, well, you get the idea. The possibilities of an onomatopoeic quasi-autobiographical novel range before my eyes... I will study sound symbolism to find just the right names for all the characters. Marvelous Mary and Fantastic Fred go up against Glowering Glover and Spartling Spurdy? To be honest, I would have to reconcile with the gloomy grouping of sounds around my initials, and like Iago turn villain because God made me so. Hmm, must go and ponder this.

Refrigerator Blindness

Apologies to everyone who has recently clicked on my blog to find stale thoughts from many months ago. I have not been lying on my back in that forest clearing staring straight up all this time. I got up some time ago and went back in the house. Since then I've been busy, you know.

Over these last few months, I have not entirely neglected the blog. I've taken periodic looks. This is in part to see if anyone posted a comment. But I also hope to find a new post (Wow. Look at that. I hope it's good). To date, this hasn't happened.

No, it's not a self-destructive hacker-fantasy or a guest-writer fantasy. I just hope to find something I've written. Something good, too.

An irrational hope, you say, and one that should be reconsidered.

Well, yes; but you see I suffer from a condition (common in immature males) gently termed "refrigerator blindness." This is the absent-minded swinging open of the fridge, in search of nothing, followed by a swinging closed and walking away. The door-swinging motion is accompanied by a blank mind. There's no expectation, no desire, no disappointment. Victims simply swing the door open, look inside, then swing it shut without any thought.

I've often pondered why I do it (sometimes even while I'm doing it, though that intrudes on the required blankness)--what do I expect to see? And if I see it, what will I do with it? I'm perfectly familiar with what's inside the fridge. I've put most of it there. And I know what my wife and kids put there.

It's the same with my blog. I get an email notification of every comment posted, so I don't have to look. But I still do. "Thank Goodness" is still the last post? Oh, how disappointing. I wish I'd write something again. I'll look back in a few days.

Perhaps refrigerator blindness stems from a gut-level need for confirmation that the interior of the fridge (and my blog) are still there. Perhaps I am heartened to find the interior still there. But the stronger desire is to find something that shouldn't.

A friend suffers from a related condition in which he opens the fridge looking for a specific item, such as the butter. After a full minute of staring, he calls to his wife: "Dear, where's the butter?" And she will call from the other room: "On the second shelf on the right, next to the jar of strawberry jam." At that point he will see the butter, at which he has looked directly several times but not recognized as butter. "Oh!" he will exclaim, pull the butter out, close the door and then brood for an hour over how he could have been so dense. "It was right there! Why couldn't I see it!"

This refrigerator blindness is the opposite of the one I suffer from. In mine, I look for what isn't there and don't see it. In my friend's, he looks for what is there and doesn't see it. Two sides of the same coin.

Helpless in the face of my affliction, I wait for my blog to produce. I look but I don't see. Oh, the humanity.

Yes, yes. Instead of whining for improbable sight, sight that creates something just by looking for it, I should just start writing. No more hiking tales to tell; but I'll start posting entertaining fragments of this or that, and hope it finds an audience. Who knows. Maybe everyone who visits this blog has a case of refrigerator blindness as well.

Thank Goodness

Another month has slipped by since I last posted. Not for lack of trying, mind you. The trouble is I cannot seem to post positively. Sad, dark thoughts crowd in every time I sit at the computer and find their ways to the ends of my fingers. I type out tales that would make paint crack and toes peel. I stop midway, pinch my lips, bend my brow and furrow in disgust. Who wants to read such stuff? Well, maybe somebody does.

 It's the environment. My family is away, and solitude encourages these sad thoughts. A mind set on itself quickly realizes its own limits, of which mortality is the greatest of all. Now, a sad thought, well-tended, can be the most delicious sentiment. Wallowing in self-pity when alone is as satisfying as a pint of Ben & Jerry's on an empty stomach. But public displays of such sentiments are rightly met with rolling of eyes and heavy sighs. Oh, he's in one of those moods again.

 But cast off these dun rags. Or are they sad rags? I forget. Maybe there's something about the sun in there too. But yes. It silly to mope and write self-indulgent glop, for writing is an act of communication by its very nature. So I've taken positive steps to dispel this gloom.

 First, I've stopped playing my Gillian Welch an Joy Division albums and instead have Pandora.com supply me with Glen Miller, Artie Shaw and other great big band tunes. Now I make breakfast to "String of Pearls" and that one about moonlight. OK, there are several about moonlight, all equally good. You know what I mean. The two-step to the refrigerator is lightly tread. The dirty dish is no longer tossed in the sink but scrubbed right then and there. And I've been shaving before leaving the house. The difference is everything.

Yesterday I spent the morning sawing logs into lumber. Cloudy and cool, it was just the right weather for hard outdoor work. Many hours and much sawdust into the morning, a thought occurred to me. Take a rest. So I took off my hearing protectors and lay down on a plank I'd just sawn. I stared up into the sky for the first time all day. Above me was a near-perfect hole in the forest crown. The oak I was milling had occupied the space above before it fell in a storm. On my back I could see the exact outline of its former crown, a near-perfect circle fringed by the last branches of the surrounding trees. 

Then a meandering insect came into sight, hovering quite high above me. I refocused on it. A gnat? Mayfly? Hard to tell. Then another. They flew an unintelligible pattern back and forth, the circle of light gray clouds their backdrop. Bugs on errands, living bugs, working bugs, unemployed bugs, criminal bugs. I watched them for a bit, took in the lovely shape above my head and laughed to think I'd been there all day without seeing the beauty above me, without knowing the little dramas of bug life playing out above the roar of my saw. So obsessed with what we sense, the unperceived overwhelms this planet with beauties born and dying beyond us. Thank goodness for them.

Distracted by fleeing time, I got back to work.