Great cottonball clouds suspend in the bright blue sky and dazzle the eye with their whiteness. They speckle the green of the near mountains with their black shadows. The far mountains roll off into a graduating purple haze.
A young lad exploring about a lakeside camp stumbles on wonders aplenty. I once found a paved ramp leading into the channel that separated the camp proper from the island-with-the-big-house-on-it. Next to the ramp was a sign that read "Ice will [blank] support vehicle". At the [blank] was a hook on which a small wooden planchette hung. On the back of the planchette was painted the single word "NOT". It struck me that in Summer, as it was then, the "NOT" should be displayed, and I helpfully reversed the piece to do so.
On another occasion, I discovered a small stream flowing into the lake in a dense cover of lakeside trees and brush. The running water sparkled in its sun-dappled course, visible off and on through the brush which rustled softly in the light breeze coming off the lake. I could only faintly hear the ripple of the stream flowing over its pebbled bed, so quietly did it run on that long gone summer's afternoon. I stood there partially shaded by the shore-hugging trees myself, my sneakers muddying themselves in the thin hem of naked earth that interposed the forest and lake. The breeze impelled the surface tension of the lake softly shoreward, whereupon it spent itself in tiny breakers which lapped at my feet. A commotion sudenly occured in the lake water as a group of minnows scurried toward the mouth of the stream, leaping from the water as they did so. Behind them, I saw an angry "V" wake making for them at high speed. It was large pickerel feeding on the fry and chasing them into the inlet whose draft was too shallow for him to follow. I memorized the spot, thinking to fish there for the pickerel later. I did that next day, and the day after that, to no success. All to the good that, for I took much delight in the privacy this place afforded me. Had I caught a large fish there I would surely have revealed its secrets to my brother in my excitement.
Ignored by most of the other children in the camp was another discovery, though it was not much hidden. It was a building shaded by tall trees at the side of the lake. The structure was a small boathouse. I decided to inspect it. It had a door to which was affixed a sign reading Fisherman's Wharf The door was closed but swung out easily when I pulled on it. The place was unoccupied. It had only three walls, the one which would have faced the lake was missing. There were oars, anchors, lifebelts and other boating paraphernalia hung on the hooks all about. From the structure, a pier ran out into the lake -- a "T" made of slats of gray, unpainted wood. There were powered boats moored here. The lake bottom about this dock was dark and muddy. There were weeds and lily pads. Trees from the shore shaded a huge area to the left as you faced the lake. It looked like prime fishing real estate to me.
Fishing ideed proved worthwhile at this place. In fact, I fished almost every day off the dock at Fisherman’s Wharf. I used worms for bait and bait casting gear and red-and-white bobbers. On good fishing days I would catch a dozen or more bluegills and a few perch in the course of three hours or so. It was here that one muggy day I was fishing when my older brother Al appeared. We fished together for a while when a thunderstorm suddenly rolled in through the notch to cool the lake with its brisk winds, fresh water, and hail. We left our baited rods on the dock with the lines cast out into the lake and retreated to the protection of the boathouse to wait out the storm. Buckets of rain cascaded from the sky turning everything gray except the red and white of our bobbers which danced goofily in the agitated water. I wondered if I would be brave enough to venture forth from the protection of the boathouse should a fish decide to strike my line in that moment. None did till the storm passed.
If fishing were sufficiently slow, I would sometimes switch to plugs. I cast Crazy Crawlers or Jitterbugs for perhaps an hour, never with any success. If the fishing were slow for bluegills and perch, it would be slower still for bass. I never did fish from the dock at night, when chances for success with bass or pickerel feeding in the shallows would be much greater. It was too dark there, and my parents discouraged any such venture. Sometimes adults would come to the Wharf, man their boats, and power off. They ignored me. I liked my solitary fishing vigils at Fisherman's Wharf. I could faintly hear, from time to time, the shouts and splashes and general hubub of the kids and families at the swimming area which was not far off downshore, but I felt just fine on my own. For the most part, the quiet of Fisherman's Wharf was remarkable. Morning, noon, and evening it seemed isolated from the rest of the camp, dedicated to the serious business of angling. Four decades later, I still miss its comforting solitude.
I recall clearly one particular day when I was fishing at the wharf. We were leaving the camp for home the following morning. It was slow fishing. I wanted to get one more fish before we left the Adirondacks with the dying summer. The bobber floated serenely and undisturbed as it had for much of that afternoon, the worm dangling beneath beckoning no fish. Nonetheless, I persisted, for there would be no fishing for me for some time. School would start soon, the Northeast fall, cool and then cold weather. Finally, I had luck. A average-sized bluegill took the bait and I reeled him in. Round-bodied and beautiful with dark blue gill flap and copper-splashed belly, I removed the hook and releasd him, watching him swim away to safer waters. Then I dumped the rest of my bait can into the water, giving a free meal to my scaly friends. I took down my rod and walked up the nave of the cathedral that was Fisherman's Wharf to its fine old rusty-hinged sanctuary door. I paused and looked back at the lake briefly. I took in the sweep of the blue lake and its flanking mountain greenery through eyes still young. I captured an image of the place to last me, I then thought, until the following summer. Then I stepped through the door, never to return. Before me lay the path back to our cabin -- and to high school, then college, the Vietnam War, beer and cigarettes, then no beer and cigarettes, accounts payable, accounts receivable, good fortune, missed opportunities, friends made, friends lost, loved ones dearly departed.
I have a black and white photograph of myself fishing there at Fishermans’ Wharf: crewcut, dungareed and shirtless I hold the old bait casting rod with my right hand obscuring the silver reel. The rod is pointed down toward the water at a forty-five degree angle. My face is as serious as I knew how to make it. Behind me stretches Trout Lake along its eastern shore to its northern terminus in the distance. Black trees border the black lake reflecting the gray sky in which puffy white clouds can be vaguely discerned suspended over the gray, rolling Adirondack mountainscape beyond the lake. My memory of this scene, however, is full of color. I enter that picture and incorporate myself back into that boy’s body. It is a sunny day. The sky is blue and the lake a darker, almost navy blue surrounded by evergreen all around. Great cottonball clouds suspend in the bright blue sky and dazzle the eye with their whiteness. They speckle the green of the near mountains with their black shadows. The far mountains roll off into a graduating purple haze.
The sun sparkles brightly in a long shimmer from midlake to the opposite shore, tapered at either lengthwise end into a scattering of glimmers. It is warm, but a light breeze riffles the surface of the water and hushes through the trees of this summers’ day in August of 1956. I feel the warmth of the air and smell the lake and the trees. I hear the tipple of the water and sense it slapping at the dock beneath my sneakered feet. The boats tug at their tethers, creaking as they rise and fall gently with the water. My ten year old eyes, unspectacled, are so sharp they can detect the dance of small water-walkers in the dark and still water beneath the dock. The air is clear and good, I inhale it all into youthful lungs still unsullied by the thousands of cigarettes I would smoke in my twenties and thirties. I am there. I have no books to balance, no computers to program, no long list of regrets collected over half a century. I want to turn round and run back through the Camp past startled vacationers, my small feet pounding the good earth of the 1950’s. I’ll go back to our cabin -- I still know the way -- back perhaps to see my father alive again and more than that -- young and hale again with decades to come. I want to keep myself there in that Adirondack Eden but before I can move and make good my escape into the world of that photograph, I am suddenly fetched back to the prison of my future where I am condemned to live.
O God, how I hate the future.
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2 April 2000