Firsts

Some reflections on opening our Adirondack cabin on my own.

Superscripts of clouds above the cursive of the hills. Photo by the author.

I’m here opening the camp by myself for the first time, none of my children available, my wife busy with work, and I have to find a way to roll the second section of dock—the one without wheels that generally requires two sets of hands—down into the water on my own. I like these kinds of puzzles, I realize, as I start to go over it in my mind a few days prior to leaving. Plan A even works: attach the canoe dolly to one end, lift the other, roll it in. Of course, it wasn’t that easy, the dolly meant to cradle a canoe hull not the right tool for the job, but I got it done without even falling in to the just-after-ice-out frigid water—something I couldn’t avoid the first-ever year we put the docks in, not seeing the rock beneath the surface as I walked backwards, dock in hand, the icy cold pouring into my waders, my wife jumping in in her blue jeans, coming to my aid…

While I spend plenty of time here alone, I’ve never been here alone on a first (or last) trip, and with no camp neighbors yet arrived on this far side of the lake, I feel doubly alone—with just the first loons of the year, a very loud, insistent pileated woodpecker hammering away, an otter eyeing me cautiously, gliding along as I sit bundled at the lakeside deck in a gusty north wind, just its forehead visible, until it arches its back and sounds, its long tail flipping up, slipping under last….

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With no one here, with no small talk required,
none but the necessary tasks to be accomplished,
with beauty at every turn…

this afternoon in the canoe for the first time, looking
across an expanse of water toward shore, the mountains
rising right up from there, the cursive of the hills,
the superscript of high clouds, all seem
like something written in a language
I understand but cannot read,

or just now, lakeside, the corrugated surface tap-tapping
the aluminum hull of my old Gruman,
nudging against the rock-lined shore,
uttering something I know but cannot say,
expressed fully yet words-beyond speaking…

and as evening approaches, tip-toeing up from the deep woods behind me,
a hoot owl comes now, far away, its incantations carrying
along on this cool, April breeze that speaks a different dialect
than summer wind as it moves through just pines, spruce,
the leafless-still branches of beech, birch, maple, cherry,

and the pileated woodpecker taps out its Morse Code,
sending still more fragments of meaning,
rhythmic punctuations, full-stops, amidst the clamor….

Meanwhile, my pen scratches along,
rushing forward, curving lines of words somehow
falling down through me to the page

as a squall darkens the waves,
bunching them into tighter formation,
marching toward me until
the whoosh and swoop of it glides
across my face, eyes tearing, until it stops,
just like that, and the murmurations of the lake
move again center stage.

The late afternoon early evening light is yellowing
the far shore just as something I’ve never seen before appears—

a loon in flight, swooping low-along
before banking back into the near bay.
They cannot light on land; their bodies would tip forward,
and they’d fall, stranded, helpless.

The way it flies reminds me of the ones I’ve seen
swimming beneath my canoe, as if they are flying there too,
wings become rudders, the sleek vessels of their bodies
that float upon dive below fly above water
but never set foot on forbidden land.

Everything is so pristine
it seems almost forbidden—
sailboats, canoes, motor boats,
bikes, swimming, diving under,
stomping along on these old feet…
feels sacrilege, my awkward self
out of place, out of sync with this
primordial, wordless world.

So…when a loon calls out into
the miles upon miles of human absence,
the pulse of the waves spreading, spreading
seem its very sound made visible.

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