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."

Comments

[John Davis]

Thanks! Really interesting. I wish i could spend my time on writing articles...just have no time for it.