Give Me Headlights,
Streetlights, Hell Even Gaslights, But Don’t Leave Me Here To Fend Off The
Wolves And The Deadly Fishes By Myself
By Will Bradley, Junior
I don’t know if under the now
couple of year old editorial management of Greg Green it is a requirement that
you have to be what somebody, one of the old-timers, called a city-slicker, a
denizen of the urban landscape to the exclusion of maybe heading to say the
Grand Canyon for a vacation or the wiles of West Egg in Long Island down the road. It sure looks
and sounds like it though when you go around the water cooler to hear people
talk about where they have been or where they are going. Plenty of talk about
Paris, London, Berlin, Frisco town, LA but not a peep about say King’s Canyon
or Yosemite, or even Hoboken down New Jersey way. Under normal circumstances that
is fine with me since I was born and raised just a shade off of Connecticut
Avenue in Washington, D.C. So I appreciate the streetlights, the safe noise of
automobiles (except maybe that incessant buzzing when a car alarm goes off forever),
people walking, talking, maybe loudly to and fro at all hours and the convenience of
say all-night drugstores and supermarkets (to speak nothing of gin mills open
until very early in the morning).
Others seem to share my
good sense, so it was rather weird, startling to find myself being assigned by that
very same editor to go report on the doings in a place called Lake Dennison
located near the New Hampshire border in Massachusetts. Not just any doings but
the doings of his friends Jane Rugg-Hurley and David Hurley who have been going
up to that locale every summer for something like twenty-five years to camp
out, to do a thing called kayaking, another thing called canoeing, some bird-watching
which I have previously heard that people do, some fishing also heard of (for
supper no less) and, let me put this one in quotes “communing with nature” for
a couple of weeks.
The genesis of this
assignment is of some interest since apparently from what Greg told Seth Garth
when he turned the assignment down flat Jane and David had been putting increasing
pressure on him, Greg, to both come up and do that “communing with nature”
business and to write a story about the place and them. Naturally Greg claimed “conflict
of interest” in that he could not possibly do justice to a story where he knew
the parties so well. That led to his first asking Seth to do the deed knowing full-well
that if Seth ventured these days further than 125th Street he would
get a nosebleed or some other horrible injury. Also knowing that the senior
staff the way things are set up now to a person have the right of first refusal
on any assignment (the privilege does not go the other way with grabbing juicy
ones that is done in some totally byzantine way as far as I know). Everybody,
every senior person, suddenly aware of their physical well-being if they could
not see a streetlight nearby, could not run to CVS at 2 AM or order take-out
after midnight exercised that right. Leaving a junior person, me, Will Bradley
to carry the spear on this one.
Greg, who had originally wanted
me to stay a week finally settled on three days once I balked and pointed out that
I had done the hatchet job on hoary legend of so-called private detective Sherlock
Holmes and his in-house lover Doc Watson for him when every senior person bailed
on that one. I was off one sunny August morning heading north through
Connecticut and up to the borderlands (meaning where the trees outnumbered the
houses by a lot). Despite all the advances in modern technology, Google Maps,
GPS, travailing, concerning putting together a simple directions package when
push came to shove I got lost in a place called Gardner for the very simple
reason that once you get out in the boondocks all the modern technology in the
world will not help if you are not satellite-connected, if you fall out of
range. To start the sojourn off on the wrong foot Jane and David had to come to
some location, a couple of streets I could identify to meet me in order to
follow them to their campsite.
This campsite needless to
say was fairly primitive meaning you had to chop and cut firewood or I guess buy
some in order to cook meals or whatever else you need a campfire for when no
stove or microwave is available. Meaning that your bodily function needs were addressed
by some compost, environmental commode I never could figure out but which smelled
to high heaven. Meaning also that despite the real-world jobs and money that
the Hurleys possessed, which I found out later was considerable, they were “roughing”
it in a dinky camper/jerry-rigged tent setup they had been using for years. Meaning
on the latter a place where I was also set up to sleep in.
I won’t even describe the ordinary
function hassles of camp life except to say I am not quite sure how the Union
Army did what they did based on their camp life doings that I have read up on.
I really didn’t sleep much but I don’t want to dwell on that stuff or the hardcore
problems with daily hygiene since this is a “mood” piece, a piece about my
reaction to that “communing with nature” noise that Greg advised me to center
the article on. Meaning how the Hurleys (and their assorted brethren of the
camps) spent their days. Day number one centered on this kayaking business
which they were all excited about since they were so close to the lake that all
they had to do was to slip the boat, ship or whatever the hell it was from the
nearby lakefront and they were waterborne. Yes, they had no problem maneuvering
their two-person kayak but when they showed me how to deal with this object (including
the thankfully obligatory lifejacket) and I was actually in the water I flipped
over, capsized they called it. Same thing the next day with the canoe which was
supposed to be a little more stable but despite lifejacket at the ready was as
capsize-worthy as the freaking yellow day-glo kayak.
But that is all in a day’s
work for a “city-slicker,” to be expected I guess for somebody who is woods and
lake clueless. What was truly weird, what was scary to these ears were the desperate
ravenous howls of the wolves who kept their noise up all night and throughout
the day as well and who sounded like they were about fifty feet away (which
they were not but some kids spotted a couple within the camp grounds). Here’s the
real madness, the reason I am glad as hell that we are in an increasing urban
country complete with those beautiful streetlights and other civilized amenities
like a local Whole Foods market to buy real food. David decided on that very
last day of my “imprisonment” to take me along with him as he went fishing (for
supper he said). That seemed simple enough at the time but when we got to his
favorite bountiful location along the lake about fifteen minutes from their campsite
and he set up his and my fishing poles somehow I snagged a fish, some fearsome
looking fish that I swear bit me, had teeth although David claimed it was only
a Lake Dennison bass and harmless.
Fortunately I was able to
get out of that locale alive without further damage but I swear despite all the
good cheer of the Hurleys and how nice they must be when they get back to the
city I think they have been out in the woods too long, too many years. Told
Greg as much when he wanted to balk on printing this last paragraph.
The latest from Lake Woe Begone
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