Flashes of Late Summer
And partial explanation for my lack of posts of late.
Fallen leaves already line our long driveway here in Connecticut, the summer flowers now just stalks and seedpods, and today the weather broke, and a first fall cold blew in. Five hours north of here at our Adirondack cabin, I recently spent three days alone trying to do all the things I love doing there, riding my gravel bike down endless dirt mountain roads, sailing my little sunfish back and forth, back forth across the rippling waves and shifty winds, hiking out through the endless forest, head down, looking for mushrooms, the fall chanterelles starting to pop already and enough of them gathered one day for an omelette. There the sweetest days of summer/early fall have arrived, nearly bug-free, cool mountain air, bass at a nearby lake pouncing on my fly made of feather and deer hair that gurgles along looking like nothing real, a small rodent perhaps, the bass attacking it just because it’s there and it’s noisy and flashy and moving and obscenely loud on the surface of their world.
Late summer, early fall, still summer storms, still warm enough to swim and do all the things of summer, but soon back to teaching again after a two-fall hiatus, I feel that old, familiar urgency to make the most of each day, to get out in the world, and now especially with a cabin, to spend as much time as possible there, savoring every moment.
Some flashes/moments I will return to in the dark of winter:
I launch my canoe out onto the perfectly still surface of a lake I’ve only paddled one other time. I had contemplated paddling far in, the whole 7+ mile length of another lake (there are so many lakes), down its meandering outflow, dragging my boat over a half a dozen beaver dams, making one short carry and finally arriving at a lovely second lake, camping on the island camp site there, catching fish and maybe eating a few and sleeping under a big, starlit Adirondack sky. But that would have taken almost all of the 3 days, 2 nights time I have. This lake is so close to the cabin and so easy to access, it gets overlooked, and the one time I fished it, it was very windy and hard to make effective casts, though I did manage a few. Today I’m alone here, and soon I’m paddling through a foot-deep channel of 6 foot grasses when I hear the unmistakable attack and gulp of a bass and see up in even shallower water the disturbance it left. I stop, pivot the canoe in that direction and fire off a cast, and just as my fly touches down, the bass pounces and is instantly hooked, running hard through the grass stalks, the fly line scraping across them, until finally I bring it to hand, grab its lower lip, lift it up into the air….
After six hours of paddling and catching lots of fat, hapless largemouth bass, I return utterly exhausted, unstrap my canoe from the car and set it down along with my fishing rod, flies, Cliff bar wrappers, empty water bottles…into my aluminum motor boat, motor across to the cabin in the late, still afternoon, unload, strip out of my sweat-drenched clothes, pull on a swimsuit and wade out then dive deep into the already late-summer-cold water. I look up through the woods at my cabin, my clothes draped across the back of the deck, look up at the sky, all blue, spin around as I tread water and look out, eye-level with the surface of the lake—legs, feet colder in the deeper water beneath me, mountains purple-blue in the hazy distance….
I am careening down a mountain road no more than two tracks of compressed dirt etched into a green world, steering around the larger rocks pushing up out of the earth, looking out for the gulleys of deep sand that will grab hold and slow you and send the bike shimmying from side to side, watching for the tendrils of prickers that sometimes grow far out into the clearing of the road, starting already to reclaim this un-wild swath running through the heart of the wilderness. A big red fox springs out of the brush to my right, its yellow-brown eyes locking with mine for an instant. I’m moving faster than it expects, gliding along, wheels crunching gravel, and for a few moments the fox and I are going the same speed, shoulder to hub, until it veers off along a stream bed, that big lovely bush of a tail the last thing I glimpse as my front tire hits the edge of a large loose rock, and I have to turn my attention back fully to the road ahead….
I sit down to do some work, but I can’t help but notice the ever increasing sound of the wind against trees. Through the skylight I see the large cherry near the cabin swaying far far up in its high branches. It is a northwest wind, so the lake disguises its intensity since we are in the northwest corner, the winds just starting to leave their mark as they fall across the fringe of trees along this shoreline. I finally give in and walk down the trail to the shore front, step down into the cool water and lean beneath the PVC and canvas shelter for my sunfish sailboat to release the bungy cords holding it in place alongside the dock. I raise the sail and point her into the wind while I snap the rudder down into place, arrange my lines, slide the dagger board into its slot and hop butt first onto the deck, swinging my legs down into the foot well. Soon the wind takes hold, stronger than expected, and I’m leaning far out, using all of my weight to keep the boat flat and fast, feeling the wind wanting to topple me, the dagger board now vibrating into a low humming sound, the hull lifting up and planing along the edges of the small waves….
The dead of night, no sound but the always there faint hiss of tinnitus in one ear, I reach up and back and push the window open as far as I can without leaving the warm comfort of my blanket. A cool stream of air falls over me, and I can now hear the loons start chanting their low, slow, mournful hoo-woos they reserve for these late dark, precious nights of late summer. Their calls are elegiac, as if the night itself were calling out something all at once close and familiar, distant and fleeting.
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I am imagining Virginia Woolf went to the Adirondacks. Stream of consciousness recall of summer. I can feel this place. Beautiful closing lines.
Lovely piece, Arnie.