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VikasPratapSingh
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One summer, along about 1904, my father rented a camp on a lake in Maine and took
us all there for the month of August. We all got ringworm from some kittens and had
to rub Pond's Extract on our arms and legs night and morning, and my father rolled
over in a canoe with all his clothes on; but outside of that the vacation was a success
and from then on none of us ever thought there was any place in the world like that
lake in Maine. We returned summer after summer--always on August 1st for one
month. I have since become a salt-water man, but sometimes in summer there are
days when the restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water and the
incessant wind which blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish
for the placidity of a lake in the woods. A few weeks ago this feeling got so strong I
bought myself a couple of bass hooks and a spinner and returned to the lake where we
used to go, for a week's fishing and to revisit old haunts.
I took along my son, who had never had any fresh water up his nose and who had
seen lily pads only from train windows. On the journey over to the lake I began to
wonder what it would be like. I wondered how time would have marred this unique,
this holy spot--the coves and streams, the hills that the sun set behind, the camps and
the paths behind the camps. I was sure that the tarred road would have found it out
and I wondered in what other ways it would be desolated. It is strange how much you
can remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the
grooves which lead back. You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of
another thing. I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake
was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was
made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen. The partitions
in the camp were thin and did not extend clear to the top of the rooms, and as I was
always the first up I would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out
into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along the shore in the
long shadows of the pines. I remembered being very careful never to rub my paddle
against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral.