once more

Summertime, oh summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweet fern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was the background, and the life along the shore was the design, the cottages with their innocent and tranquil design…

This was the morning we’d talked about, the one where we’d swim to the island, or the islands, the two small ones directly opposite the little beach area where I go every morning for my swim. The morning where Manon would lead us on her paddleboard, one of the boys at her feet (in a life-jacket), the other in the small inflatable dingy towed behind the paddleboard with a rope. This was the morning. We set Grandad up on the beach–yesterday he took a header down the bank in front of our house where he was cutting out brush as a safety measure against fire, sliced open his scalp, and had to be taken to Emergency in Sechelt for a CAT scan and stitches; he was feeling fine but the rather dashing Barbary bandage around his head isn’t supposed to get wet– so anyway, we set him up on the sand, and we set forth.

I’ve been swimming in this lake since the first spring I knew John when we came up to camp near where the little park is now. That was 1979. When Forrest was a baby and we were building our house nearby, we’d bring the plastic baby bathtub down to the shore after the workday and we’d fill the tub with lake water and put him in it to cool. He was 4 months old so in a way he’s known the water his whole life. His brother and sister came to the lake in infancy too, and in every other stage of their lives. Now they come with their children.

It seemed to me, as I kept remembering all this, that those times and those summers had been infinitely precious and worth saving.

You can’t see the islands in the photograph. But they’re the ones that catch the first light when the sun comes over Mount Hallowell in the morning, later these days than in June, and sometimes I arrive for my swim and see them golden against the darker far shore. They’re formed of volcanic rock, with a few pines on each, a fir or two, some mazanita, slopes covered in kinnikinnick. Two young women were camping on the far side of the island we arrived at and once Forrest had caught his breath, he swam with his boys and Manon across the narrow strait to the other island. I sat in the warm sun and looked to shore where John sat in a chair, waiting for us.

One dark note: as we were coming back, a fast boat raced by, with a skier behind it, the guy operating the boat looking at the skier. They weren’t close enough to worry about but then they came back, not seeing us, though we raised our arms above us to let them know we were there. The boat veered away but later, as we were nearly at the beach, it came around so the person at the wheel could scold us. We saw you, said my son; we raised our arms so you’d see us. It’s your responsibility to watch out for swimmers too. The guy didn’t think so. (I know there are floats you can wear when swimming but I’m not convinced we need equipment to simply enjoy the water which is there for all of us. And I’m not convinced two guys racing across the lake, one of them on skis and one of them looking back, would notice a float more readily than four arms raised in the air.)

For the rest of today, as I water tomatoes and hang out laundry and pick some beans for dinner, I’ll remember swimming to the island under a sky so blue I thought of heaven or at least a version of it where the water is clean, no gas engines are allowed, trees lean over to make shady areas for fish and the loon family that passed us yesterday could swim safely, practising their song.

We would be tired at night and lie down in the accumulated
heat of the little bedrooms after the long hot day and the breeze would stir almost imperceptibly outside and the smell of the swamp drift in through the rusty screens.

Note: the quoted material is from E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake”, first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1941.