A Forest Green Canoe

There’s a lake by my summer cabin, just down the path and to the right; a particularly sharp right that startles you if you’re walking too fast and not paying attention. It’s a lovely spot to visit, crisp pine trees rising nearly from the water’s edge and smooth gray stepping stones, once carefully arranged by Mother Nature. I don’t like hiking there often, which seems odd, I know, though I have my reasons. There are places in the world that each of us would rather avoid than revisit, lest some haunting memory spring itself unexpectedly upon us, and so exists my strained relationship with this pleasant, lakeside beach. On some days, however, the weather grows unbearably hot, and I feel compelled to make the walk down to that cooler spot. I take my mother’s silver crucifix in one pocket, and my little Westie, Edward IV. I didn’t name him that, and I’ve always just called him Eddie. He’s friendly and always alert, a comfort to anyone who needs it. Lord knows I do. He barks at the monsters between the trees and wags his tail in the most irresistible way when I glance at him. I can’t help but smile. It is one of the small joys in life that most people overlook, but that I treasure.          
         When I walk down that path to the lake, Root Beer Lake, and I have Eddie trotting along happily at my side, and my mother’s tiny silver cross in my pocket, then sometimes I get a bit spooked. The trail is so familiar to me. It fills my head with memories until my there’s no more room for other thought and I forget what I was doing in the first place. About halfway along, for example, there’s this old pine tree with gnarled, barren branches at its base. Once upon a time, my son and daughter were climbing it, still being young of course, and scrambling from one branch to another. They nearly reached the top! It was amazing. I laughed, and was so proud that they’d made it; how they’d grown. But Hannah, the smaller of the two, lost her footing, and Cody, who was always a little saint, went back down to help. My husband, Jack was standing beside me, holding my hand tightly, and he gripped it even harder when it happened. I still recall almost exactly what he said, (which is strange because I don’t often remember those things). He called up to Cody, and warned him not to let Hannah onto his branch because it would break. Horrible thoughts filled my mind as he said this. They clouded my senses with a dull fear, dripped their paralyzing venom into my veins. I opened my mouth to call up to my children in encouragement, but the words never came. I, myself, was not certain that everything would be okay.
         We couldn’t see too well at all, (the forest gets dark and fills with shadows even at midday), but I heard the snapping sound and heard Cody falling and hitting branches, heard that awful noise of air being battered out of his lungs. I screamed, or at least I believe I did. I hadn’t a clue what I was doing, you see, but I heard the sound in my own ears and knew. Then Jack got this determined look on his face, wrenched his hand away from mine and went sprinting over to the base of the tree. He managed to catch Cody just in time. Nobody was hurt with the exception of a few cuts and bruises, but poor Hannah was inconsolable. She cried and cried and blamed herself for a good hour or so. I could hardly keep her still.
         At last, after half a box of tissues and two Dr. Seuss books, I had to think of another way to calm her down. She loved Root Beer Lake, and so I carried her there on my shoulders, singing Sesame Street at the top of my poorly tuned lungs. Her eyes sparkle when she finally stuck her toes in the sand, and we threw rocks like tiny missiles to break the glass surface at sunset until our faces turned purple in the drowsy sun. I wish to this day that I could take as much comfort that place as Hannah. I have my own little comforts in life, even if this lake is not one of them. I didn’t have Eddie then. Maybe she would’ve loved him too.
         There were times when I enjoyed the water, just like Hannah. I sat out there with my books and my iced lemonade in the mornings when the sun was yawning and the day still blooming. Jack explained to me in his science professor voice that it was extremely deep, and that’s why people called it ‘Root Beer.’ It’s so dark and ominous at the center. Sometimes fishermen come in the summertime with their motor boats, and I can hear them churning the water from up the hill in my cabin. It’s a steady whirring sound that penetrates my quiet thoughts and bothers me all day, until at last in the red and orange evenings, I venture down that winding path to the beach front.
It is so silent.
Nothing can drown it out, not my shouts across the water, not the birds calling for their mate, not the anguish in my head…nothing. Once I’m there, of course, I feel fine, maybe a little empty, but alright. I can distract myself from nature’s prying questions with throwing rocks and disturbing the peace. It’s getting to that spot that stops me cold most days.
         Often, I wind up standing there, motionless and wondering what else there is to do. I could swim, though I never took many lessons. I could take the rowboat out, perhaps, but I really cannot steer the thing with those hefty old oars. Truth be told, I dislike water. There is a deceptive peacefulness in its glassy depths and murky bowels that set me on edge. When I’m standing out on the shore of Root Beer Lake, dark and enticing, and there are the mountains just over those Douglas firs on the opposite shore, I get this feeling that starts in my toes, in the blonde volcanic sand, and shudders up my legs, rattling my knee caps and hip bones, bouncing off ribs and so on until permeates my self entirely creating a maddening racket among my vibrating joints. Eddie can sense this, and he watches me curiously like a five year old in quiet anticipation. I clutch my cross until it leaves a striking likeness in my palm. The birds call, and the fish all but reply, and those distant gloomy mountains just sit idly in the rainbow evenings, basking beneath the glory of heaven till the sky grows dark. I, however, am there on that sandy shore of that wretched lake, obscured by a darkness that cuts its swath through the Earth’s bulging middle, alone with Jesus Christ, forever carved into his moment of salvation, and little, fuzzy Eddie, innocent in his ignorance.
         On these occasions, my eyes travel out across the water, alighting on the twisted, gnarled pines that Jack spent so much time sketching, painting, shading till his hands turned blue, alighting on a massive granite rock, jutting out proudly over the crystalline surface, the very same from which Cody first leapt in his seventh summer, coming to rest on Hannah’s little village by the shore, huts and buildings formed with stones, carefully carried and stacked, that now sit untouched as graves. What can I do but sigh? What can I do except release such a tortured noise from my lungs? This lake and its peace, deceptive slumber, waiting to swallow whole anything it desires, this lake tears at me, mocks me, gazes at me with eyes that apologize for its nature, still unable to alter its monstrosities and its beastly design.
         God sent a flood once that swallowed up the world whole, washing away the lives of his beloved sinners and their meaningless accomplishments. There is a reminder for us now, though mostly for me, in every lake, ocean, river, and stream of Noah’s flood, of the waters that do not choose for they were not made to care, only to take what is given them, to capitalize on those opportunities presented.
         I hate lakes, in all honesty, I do. Standing stock still in that pleasantly warm sand, perhaps enjoying myself, I cannot find peace, or pleasure, or hate. (Wrath has never come easily to me.) Instead, I observe my loneliness, reflected in the impenetrable, glass surface while I stand unobstructed before God and wondering why it was that the lake did not swallow me too. Where is my judgment day? If I stretch out my fingers and touch the surface, I wonder, penetrate the mystery, will it be Jack there, in his most basic essence? I love them, and I loved them just the same that day when they graced me with delighted smiles, begging with hopeful eyes that I join them, but I, regretfully and warily, stood firm on shore; sent my blessings to the wind that they be returned safe, and clear gaze lingering on the sturdy figure of my husband as they rounded the rocky point in a forest green canoe. I turned my back to them, walked up that path to my cabin, and waited…and I am still waiting today, seven years past departure.
          I believe that I shall be waiting until eternity, for they never again set foot on shore, (to the best of my knowledge.) With the passing of each nostalgic summer, I promise Eddie, sitting so contentedly in the passenger seat of my station wagon, that I will sell that cabin, be finished with it. Each year I return home with a real estate card on my desk and a sticky note on the refrigerator, but seven years have passed, and still, t