Memory of a Lake (April 29th, 2024)
Another memory has just now emerged—incrementally yet unnoticed like the arrival of a season, or the end of an arduous journey—from the depths of my unknowing; the lake campsite comes into view, first by reaching out its endlessly dark, deep crevices into the edges of my sight like a twisting picture frame, staking out memory’s claim in my mind—then gradually the forest starts ringing in my ears: the cicadas and the wind mix laughter, the hooting of mourning doves, the leathery flap of a bat wing. Then the hum of tires keys me in to the existence of a winding mountain road, old and breaking down at its edges—aha! There it is; I should be somewhere above it just about now, vibrating in the back seat of my father’s red sedan, maybe asleep, or perhaps just nearing in… Above me the leaves shimmer into the moist, moss-drenched air, and their branches wave—but squarely, surely, as if they had always had: the same then, the same at creation, the same now.
Soon the horizonless lake comes into view (as it appeared to me then will not be how it appears on the map, if one were to look—only one of us can be right, though, and here I am always so), bordered by small campgrounds on all sides, interspersed here and there with sudden, rocky bluffs tumbling to the shore, which from our position on the road, is visible only in cracks of deep blue, curling in and out of the woven forest wood. The three of us, my father, my twin, and myself, were to stay in one of said campgrounds (where we will join them), a collection of wooden cabins amongst a field of picnic tables and coal-filled grills, the latter of which stood at the helm like scarecrows overlooking their crop: dew-covered, emerald grass, patches of soft, light dirt, and eventually, when they looked out through their iron eyes—pouring fragrant smoke skyward—out past the field, becomes visible to them a rocky beach dotted with ink-green beach glass and a flat, stoutly-shaped dock.
There was a receptionist’s desk at the campground too (another unearthed specimen, gentlemen. Carefully brush off the dust, and, there’s a vertebrae, yes, careful now…) which was fashioned out of the front foyer of a larger, two-storied cabin, carpeted in red and everything trimmed in brass. Brass is an important element here, not just contributing its muted color, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the metallic smell and dusty feel on one’s hands after just a moment sliding down a handrail, a moist grip at a doorknob, the bored fidgeting of a child on the lip of the clerk’s desk—all the while the white tile and children’s drawings hang on the kitchen walls in visible slips through a door ajar off to the left, just past a soot-stained fireplace and a shoe-rack, which sit quietly there upon inspection. Here money was exchanged between by father and the clerk, always cash, always crumpled, keys were given, words uttered, but none of that being handed over the desk, hanging high above my head like clouds, mattered, I surely found much more interest at the going-on’s at hip-height, a vantage point on the world which I have seldom visited since it was my default.
The possibilities spread out before us in all directions—after liberating ourselves from the front office, letting our bags down in our one-bedroom, and running for the shore in our bathing suits, my brother and I were finally free. Although while the receptionist’s room must have then seemed stifling and oppressive, to me now it must surely approach heaven, maybe at nighttime when the common area would’ve been lit by a chimney fire, or perhaps when the home’s proprietor would’ve come around with tea, simple conversation, fresh towels. But now is not the time for conjecture—we are running in reverse here, let us continue.
There was always an array of lake sports at the behest of my father—fishing, swimming, boating, etc—but while entertaining, could never pose a match for the humble, concrete dock resting at the lake’s entrance. There, an infinite number of games were permuted between my twin and myself. But perhaps even more importantly so, we shared this blank canvas with the only other children at the camp—a set of two sisters, names unknown, who summered there with us year after year. How we always ended up at the campsite at the same time, still eludes me, most likely they had some deeper connection to the place—perhaps their parents owned it, maybe they lived nearby—and would spend their whole summers enveloped in its hazy stillness. One was older than the other, and perhaps wore glasses—conjuring her image (tailor fit for my uses here; I’ve removed, consciously or otherwise, bits of fabric here and there in front of the mirror, measuring, folding, pinning, re-measuring…) now, a name bubbles up: Olivia? Let’s carry on with that for now, it’s the closest we’ll get—thin-framed-glasses too, gets us an inch or two more precise. Place a pin there—in, around the back, through to the front—done. Olivia with thin-framed-glasses it is. The younger one’s particulars are less salient, but the two of them both had straw brown hair and eyes, and were terribly fair-skinned—compared to my brother and myself, at least—who at this point in the season were no doubt thoroughly olive-toned.
There are certain realities taken for granted as a child, one being the impermanence of people and places. Somehow year after year I knew of these two sisters, chased them around the lake and its forest for hours, was fairly smitten by the two of them, and yet, assumed them to remain there all my life, perhaps existing at that nameless campground solely for my purposes, vanishing upon my departure and rematerializing the following summer. Nor did the thought ever cross my mind that my father would stop taking us on vacation, or that I would ever reach an age where chasing women around a lake would cease to be either a form of love or remotely appropriate. And so in this simple, matter-of-fact way, the four of us would meet on the first day of our arrival as if no time had passed in the intervening year. Autumn, winter, spring, these had surely passed at the lake, no doubt full of that slow and grinding, but then all-of-a-sudden change so familiar to me now. But never for us back then—to a child, the auburn foliage of autumn, the pungency of spring, go almost unnoticed in the face of summer and the absolute freedom it holds in store: yes—to a child, the pleasures of make-believe, the unrestricted play and love that manifests as some combination of nervousness, calloused, mud-stained feet and knees, and warm mouthfuls of lake water held in for just the right moment—all of this towered over the rest of the year, almost tauntingly so, as the clear victor (and maybe one would feel enticed to say ‘masquerades,’ here, instead of ‘manifests,’ though I believe much more so that child’s play is not so much a ‘hiding-of’ love as it is a simple ‘experiencing-of’).
We would often depart during the day on some fishing or boating excursion with our father, and leave the sisters to manage without us, but nonetheless they would be there upon our return, waiting, watching us as we grilled dinner for a sign that we would finish, and therefore could resume our playing. Only night was much higher stakes, the sun down so as to leave us completely to our own devices, and the dark mysteries of the forest to keep us bound together for safety’s sake; no matter the fights—of which there were frequent—that may’ve transpired during the daytime, the black fringes of the camp, the open road extending into the trees, and the occasional owl or fox cry, piercing through the mass chorus of cicadas, would force us into an alliance: we would huddle together to plan, to scheme, to act in its defiance. Our enemy—the aforementioned ‘it,’—was vague, and yet perfectly well known to each of us. Again non-entities like these can be notoriously difficult for adults to grasp, and if it weren’t for the thin trail of childhood that has graciously made itself available to me now, I myself would not be quite able anymore to articulate who or what ‘it’ is. But I can try, even though it may prove to be a thin attempt. It was somehow a mix of the following, the exact proportions I have since lost access to: first of all, ‘it,’ was the night itself, but through it the slow discovery of the existence of oppositely-gendered humans, the previous’ effect on one’s young, untouched heart, insects and all things creepy, the hugeness of the world, freedom from one’s parents, and of course, the fear of turning old like them. Whether we fought against ‘it’ or for ‘it’ doesn’t matter—the only thing that did was the fact that ‘it’ could be defeated, granted of course the right precautions were to be taken, and the game plan followed to a tee: a run-and-hide behind this cabin, a meeting on the dock to discuss, a brief peer down the nighttime road, and a step out into it’s blackness before before a cunning and meticulously premeditated retreat.
Once, during on such maneuver—anyone else watching might have assumed we were playing a game like hide-and-seek, but a careful eye, a child’s eye, would have known it was something much more subtle, divine even—my twin went missing in the dark. He had hidden, and the seeking phase had gone on dangerously too long. All hope had been lost. ‘It’ had won and everything was to come crumbling down shortly and surely. But as with all great final acts, at precisely the moment the carpet has been pulled out from under the hero’s feet is the trap door revealed; and so at just the right moment, with the tears and guilt and worry mounting behind our eyeballs, he reappeared from behind a dumpster, and all hope was restored. Jealously, perhaps, even, at his cunning—upon his receiving a hug from Olivia in exchange for his reappearance. Most importantly, though, we were all safe for the time being, having forestalled ‘it’s’ arrival for one more night.
The fact of the matter is that there was much more to the camp than this, infinitely more so in fact. The fires my father would build for us, along with all its particulars, if I were to summon them too, would constitute an infinity unto itself: the way we went about gathering twigs and branches from the edges of the camp, the warming of our grass-stained toes, numb and cold from the damp earth at night, or simply, delicately, how the lake would ripple and swish in the distance, hardly visible through the flames licking the air, so on and so forth.
This infinity of infinites, while it may take a lifetime, could in theory be fully explicated, although most likely at some diminishing return to the world, myself included. No—it’s much better to explore its fullness by oneself, and in in little dips, like a humming bird does in a copper dish of rain. Digestible, containable dips. And truthfully, I think I’ve chiseled out the edges of the bust I’d set out to sculpt here (the desire to do so perhaps having been born the other week at about five-thirty in the gray dawn, when that damned cat I was watching knocked my little Modigliani bust off the nightstand, shattering it into bits, and I went about planning the construction of a new, unshatterable one).
Where are the two sisters now? If we recall—and I suppose we are already accustomed to this act—their disappearance and re-materialization at the end and beginning of each season, along with my perfect indifference to it, then we shall perhaps be a little more comfortable with the sudden silence of their departure just once more. So too must we say farewell to the gentle lapping of the shore, the bloody copper smell on our palms, now quickly returning in size, and the essential night herself. ‘It’ has finally proved victorious. But still, and ideally so, when we eventually greet these things all again—shirtless, screaming, and slathered in sunscreen—not a single season will have elapsed for any of us.