Long lines defeat the spirit (and traffic blunts your edge).
I’m driving, an American pragmatic; defiant, appeasing and accommodating,
over and under paved roads, bouncing on the unprepared.
Cutting barren paths in lush desire,
driving.
At 60 mph, on route 80, through upstate New York, just north of Cooperstown, the drive was hidden and I had to stop quickly to back into it. The lake, which was barely visible through the dense forest, lay quietly lapping at the small section of shore allotted me at the end of this driveway. I found a portal in the trees; wide enough to cast and the earth here was solid, not muddy. The water opened up; stretching its reach far past the narrow door I stood in and the once invisible waters glimmered in the afternoon sun, wide and free of worry. The water was clear and I could see the lake’s pebbled floor rolling out into a deep black. There was a fringe of water grass to my left and a fallen tree, looking like a pathway into the submerged realm. An occasional auto motored past but they could not see me nor I them, and from my berth I saw no trace of man.
I sent a postcard to my brother, anonymously; it read:
I wish you many years of good times and meaningful words.
Hash is more fragrant and hotter; I was thinking this while reflecting and casting.
The high is thicker though; I’ll often pepper my marijuana with hash because I still love the raw burn of reefer in my mind. Hash, because of its form, compact and sticky, seems a more sophisticated drug. I hold both in high esteem. I liken it more to a comparison between the Northern Pike and Muskellunge, laughing at a status based on class distinctions. In the glimmering water the fiery orange belly of a large Pumpkinseed flashed under my bait. In the wide waters of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, she and I would smoke our marijuana, out in the lake until the sky was some magnificent curtain and the bordering forests tapestries. Any strike would yield from me such enthusiasm and surprise that I would tear the line from the water, usually with a shout. She would laugh and I would stutter trying to catch my breath, my heart clambering. I lost every fish this way. In the car I would imagine the highways were waterways.
Earlier, in the spring, we were camping at Frontier Park off route 21 at the border of Texas and Louisiana. In the manner of our ancestors we struck out paddling across the glass like water. The forest’s edge came fast, stiffly standing at the lake’s rim. The lake’s shore was a tangle of Mangrove roots and branches swimming in clear black water. I had been short tempered that night, in the south. The wind was strong and I couldn’t get the fire going. I struck out at her in the evening, after a troublesome day. I didn’t like to miss opportunities to light fires.
In the early morning, just at sunrise, a light mist would cover the lake and its surface would be still and an occasional bass would break its tranquil surface and we would cast a line its way. I preferred to paddle while she fished and hear the slither of our canoe’s belly against the water.
I would watch the smoke rise and dissipate against the dark, earthy greens of our forest walls like the fluorescent monofiliment twisting into the deep. Both hash and reefer are mood enhancing though not all-together calming.
In the north these wafting clouds of smoke became signals to keep the bugs away and it seemed to work. The near-fall was considerably less plagued than the early spring. The pines and birch trees grew thick around us; there was no matted floor or tables littering the forest’s scalp. It made me feel more of a man than I usually allow myself. The whole image radiated a sense of uncontainability and still I felt a kinship with it. If I could figure out what that meant I would be liberated.
That night I slept beneath an empyrean quilt, tucked away from humanity, and in the morning I was woken by the first moments of the solar breach. I came to as the sun’s nearing painted the night sky with a soft illuminance but returned to a light sleep.
As the sun broke the forest’s crown, the earth’s lushness burned my eyes and I saw some great vision of the primordial world. I entered the still lake. The water is cold, not unbearably, but crisp and laps against my ears as I hold my breath, keeping myself afloat. The pressure of the air in my lungs sounds inside my head. The space is taut. I am a ship defying the sea's treachery, the expanse continues, swimming off and out, wrapping itself behind me somehow.
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