The first house I owned in this area was a small Cape in the woods. When the leaves were off the trees, from the upstairs bedroom window I could see the sparkle of Seaver Pond, part of a chain of lakes that passes through the town. In between the lakes, the streams ebb and flow with the action of the dams. I can only imagine all the factories that ran on the power of this water. I know that one made clothespins. Another belted out woolens. I’ve heard that back then a thick residue and the brilliant colors of industry accumulated on certain ponds. People of that era understood the purpose of the waters around them, but they probably didn’t have much chance to enjoy them or worship their beauty. This is our privilege.
When my husband was alive, we used to put our boat into Silver Lake just about every night after work. Often we’d go out at sunrise as well. It didn’t matter that we didn’t have a house on the water. Our boat gave us all the proximity to the lake we could hope for. As long as the water was free of ice, we’d set forth. We’d row past the cottages, smell the bacon cooking, see smoke rising from a chimney, and keep rowing until there was just open water and trees at the edge. No one else but us. There we’d swim or drop a line in and let the boat drift. Great blue herons would startle up out of the bog. Loons would cry and, once or twice, surface next to the boat, fixing a red eye on us.
The boat was made by a boatbuilder on Cape Cod for an elderly man who went blind soon after taking possession of the little craft. We bought the boat from him with a mixture of excitement over our purchase and sadness for the man who had never been able to use what he obviously had wanted. I often think of him and all the peaceful evenings he missed out on. The boat is flat-bottomed and stable, painted white on the outside and dark gray inside, a color scheme we kept like the tenets of a religion.
I still have the boat, but I don’t go out in it as often. When I do, the experience is just as magical. On good evenings, I sometimes push off, dropping oars into water so clear you can see 20 feet down to the bottom. The rhythm of the rowing, lift and drop, lift and drop, can soothe just about any anxieties I have ever had.
In the fall, I reluctantly bring the boat home, imagining a summer when I will once again go out every night and early mornings, too. It takes two to carry the boat to the barn, so I always enlist the help of a friend. Together we lift the upside-down pram from the back of the pickup. The oarlocks dangle from their chains as we walk through the wide-open doors of the big barn. In the back, a set of sawhorses awaits. We sidestep into position, eyeballing the proportion of boat to sawhorse until it’s balanced just right, and bring her to rest on her wooden winter mooring. I run my hand over the bottom, the paint flaky from a summer of sun and water. I think about the spring, when I’ll scrape and smooth her, apply the special marine paint and then the spar varnish to her gunwales. It’s a special kind of love that paints a good boat, and it’s a good boat that can take you so many extraordinary places within the circle of a modest lake and a life so short.
This essay originally appeared in the September 2002 issue of Yankee. To learn more about Edie Clark, read her selected articles and essays, or order her books, go to edieclark.com.
