On Lake Magic

It is iconic as Hemingway’s Cuba before its castration, intense as his Berlin before the war and simplistic as Fitzgerald’s dancing in the fountains of New York before the crash. It is mine, this magic lake, but not mine alone. It has been the secret of all lake lovers as far back as when God created lakes. His mighty glaciers left behind pristine waters in which fish still know how to jump for joy. Swing out over the green reflective waters on an old rope swing, let go at the furthest point out over the mirrored lake and you feel as though you are recapturing something as simple as youth. Just after sunrise, you can shove off the shale-covered shore with a canoe and create the first ripples of the day, your paddle dipping into the cool dark depths like a spoon into chocolate mousse. It is that delicious. It is that rich with memories….

Her womb is deep and cold yet it has cradled life for thousands of years in its scooped out center. Sunken steamers rest on her bottom rusting away as slowly as they once made their way up the lake to deliver passengers to landings named for the families long gone, but who came after the Indians, the lakes first guardians, before there were roads to travel up her mighty ravines.

We fight to keep her as preserved as my Grandmothers’ jellies and relishes that stand on the shelves in the darkened dirt floor cellar below our cottage. There is the inevitable tearing down of an idyllic but rotting camp cottage, replaced by a McMansion…but mostly things stay the same. The sheriff’s boat goes by with really no destination in mind, just reminding us that there are rules to be followed here. The morning quiet and calm waters slowly begin to churn as the neighbors boat comes back in from early morning fishing expedition. Someone on down the lake is towing an erect skier on one ski so fit and bronze the sunlight glistens off her legs and the plume of water created as she crosses the wake. An old, woody, Chris craft growls to life up the lake somewhere. It is as identifiable as the growl in your stomach when you smell frying bacon drifting in on the breeze. Our dog stands and sniffs the air, then turns around in a circle twice before settling in again for what becomes the cycle of her day. Cicadas buzz in the trees, warning of the heat to come. Soon I need to go in and close the windows against the warming air. I can hear the neighbor’s grandchildren giggling next door. I imagine they are pulling on their slightly damp bathing suits from yesterday to begin the timeless round of swimming, fishing and fighting over who will get the inner tube. Somewhere in every cottage under bunk beds and couches lies a scattered double deck of cards missing a card or two for use on a rainy day. “Go fish” and “War” are still as popular as ever. When the rain does drive you onto the porch a Monopoly tournament will begin and go on for days with the players changing as night does to day. Its shoe and top hat tokens lost. Cheerios substitute for the green motels that vanished generations ago.

By mid-day, the sun is striking the water so brightly that it shimmers, like a giant diamond snake so white that its writhing blinds you. My own hungry children nosily come in demanding food and drink for themselves and several others in tow. I have known them all since their birth, longer even as I grew up with their parents and know their grandparents. A newly, opened loaf of Wonder Bread has been consumed by the gang that disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. The only proof that they had been there is one uneaten crust of bread, one broken flip-flop and someone’s old rubber nose plugs. With their stomachs full with summers gourmet menu of sandwiches, sodas, Wise Potato Chips, Necco Wafers and frozen homemade popsicles, they ignore my call to wait a half hour before swimming. Young children all around the lake will wiggle out of damp suits, as it is naptime. Their exhausted their young bodies needing to rest from playing in clean fresh air and water.

I wander over to my neighbors after cleaning up the lunch mess in search of adult conversation, joining other mothers there, we discuss the same comforting topics that mothers have always discussed….why is it so hard to get your child to nap, when we will start shopping for school supplies and what to make for dinner. It is very easy to stay there in that comforting familiar circle of friends. Our summer passes this way and I wonder about how life can still be this simple. The days drift by unchanged as when my grandfather led my father to pitch his tent on the shore where once Seneca Indians banked their fires and camped. Timeless magic lingers on the breeze that makes today just like yesterday and tomorrow float by just like today.

We all await the return of our spouses from their work in the city. Mine will climb up the time worn stone steps to the veranda. Maybe after a dinner of corn on the cob, burgers and potato salad we will slowly come together to dance to the oldies on the radio as we once danced to Cassie Cassum’s, “Top Forty Hits”, before he and they became the oldies. People have been swaying together here as long as there has been music. Our song “Star Dust”, by Hoagy Carmichael was written just up the road at the old hotel. Once upon a time, a skating rink stretched out over the water next door to the old hotel. Hoagy some how captured the magic that is cast out over my lake at dusk like a fisherman’s net. If you stay up late enough and let your campfire die down to red-grey embers, you can still see the stars that inspired him. They are still up there.

 I look forward to night fall and the loons call telling me it is time to tuck in the little bodies of my children in their twin beds, Woolrich blankets pulled up to their chins. I remind them to say their prayers, to sleep tight and that tomorrow is another day. If I wait silently in the hall I will see the glow of their flashlights coming on under their blankets where they reread old tattered copies of Nancy Drew and Zane Grey. Scarlet, our dog has come to the foot of the stairs hoping that we will take her hint that we too should go to bed, but I cannot resist the loons haunting call to once again sit on the veranda, to move back and forth in the porch swing. It hangs beside the wrought iron furniture that has been placed there every summer for more than fifty years. Before I called it mine, it was my parent’s furniture. I love this furniture as much as I love the lake. The cushions have cradled my family for decades. They are faded from the sun, slightly stained with spilt baked beans and catsup from family reunions, but their weave is still as tight as our family ties. Tied too am I to this lake where soon enough my children will be grown and gone. However, I know they will return, pulled in by her flowing waters, just like the loons return each summer as if by magic.

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