squeegee

We take our old Radisson canoe named Edy to check out Esopus Creek flowing through Kingston, NY, and further north until it joins the Hudson. As we paddle on, we pass great fallen trees almost blocking the stream, one skittering muskrat and a lone Great blue heron loudly concerned by our presence. Sporadic noises of internal combustion engines carry over from the nearby NY Thruway and a string of tents hidden in streamside bushes behind a new car dealership mark an encampment of the city's homeless. A few days later we learn one of the residents was found dead, stabbed many times, under his collapsed tent. The police came and did the usual: had the camp cleared of all its residents. Would they also vacate an apartment building after someone committed murder on its 13th floor?

But for us it is still a gentle morning, spent between a clear sky arching above our canoe and a layer of silky mud passing under its bottom. Soon we meet another creek traveler -- a rare breed on weekdays -- in his own old Radisson he purchased for $200 after he dug it out of his neighbor's garage and removed the cobwebs. His name is Miron and he appears to be innocent of the basic "J" stroke which would keep his canoe tracking like a good sled dog. Instead, he paddles rapidly on one side and then on the other, sending his boat in different directions with every stroke. Hard work, this, but Miron is making progress.

Further south we find a log wedged across the creek and boisterous thickets of poison ivy crowding both banks. Portage -- and go on? Noooooo... we are both allergic, and I am already raking my forearms marked by last week's ivy encounters. We turn back and remember we need to send some books to my brother in Poland, so we drive to our post office. Not long ago, the building suffered some damage after one of the ancient Hurley residents rammed its front wall with his pickup. The local paper briskly reported:

No one was injured in the accident at about 11:15 a.m. after the elderly male driver of the truck parked in a space in front of the building went forward instead of backward, according to postal clerk Diana Cline. Cline said the unidentified driver told investigators his gas pedal stuck...

The note failed to mention we only ram buildings if we park our cars with noses pointing at them and then turn the ignition on and put our cars in the forward gear. The stuck gas pedal is a mere afterthought and should not be blamed.

After the front wall was replaced and enhanced by a great expanse of windows, we congratulated our P.O. clerks: finally, they had a lovely view of the sky, the neighborhood trees and more cars attempting to ram their building. The clerks agreed. But within a few days the new windows were blocked by cardboard boxes and other postal supplies, and that was that. Perhaps it is better not to see another pickup coming, with the gas pedal stuck to the floor?

John goes to mail the books. I walk to our gas station -- which is, as usual, trying to hire anyone willing to sell chewing tobacco, Wonder Bread and lukewarm pizza all day long -- and collect a tired squeegee: I may as well wash our Toyota's grimy windows. On my way back I see another Hurley ancient heading for his old red Chevy parked next to our car. The man notices me, too. He seems confused.

"Sorry," he says. "I see you want to clean my car's windows but I do not need it. They are dirty but I always find a part I can look through. So... no, but thank you very much. Not today."

Hm? Now it is my turned to be confused until he reaches into his pocket and fishes out some change.

"Here," he says. "I hope this helps. Please take it."

And suddenly I know: he thinks I am a "squeegee woman" because I am holding the right tool and remind him of many "squeegee men" who used to work street corners in New York and wash car windows stopped at the traffic for a bit of change. I look the part, too, with my messy hair and ratty paddling clothes. The man probably used to live in the city for many years before he retired, moved upstate and slowly became truly ancient. Never mind there were never any squeegee men in our village with its historic Huguenot houses and tidy gardens now crowded with triumphant day lilies in bloom.

I thank him, decline the change and get into our Toyota. John gets in, too. But on our way home I realize I may have done something else: take the money -- I think it was a couple of quarters -- and let the man feel he has actually helped someone.

©Yva Momatiuk

summer's end

Morning, morning.

Another day, already shorter by many minutes of daylight, with the light -- yes, that precious summer daylight -- now streaming lower, as if tired of hanging too high for too long. Overhead: two-tone passing clouds, shifting shadows and dark foliage of trees. Below -- and almost underfoot -- sweet slugs on mushroom stems, moss cushions and tall ferns: taller than ever. It has been a wet month, so wet that shrooms emerge already moldy and our heads spin as the barometer jumps up and down like a flea on speed.

Never mind: we have what we have, and the wet is considerably better than the dry and many destructive forest fires out West. We slip our shoes on, check the straps tying our canoe down, and go. It is usually eight minutes to our home lake, a bit longer now that Hurley Mountain Road became a detour for Rt.209 while one of its bridges is being replaced. We pass a growling 18-wheeler which brutally squeezes us right on a tight turn, an empty school bus, some pickup trucks seemingly just cruising back and forth, and join state highway 28W which unspools its 280 rural miles between Kingston, NY, and Warren County way south. 

Before we turn off the highway a few minutes later, I notice a bank of clouds already assembling above the Catskills. The recent forecast of our local Hudson Valley Weather is a replica of yesterday's. It starts with a neighborly concern and then tells us what we already suspect. 

We hope everyone made out ok after last nights storms. Unfortunately we are not done with the unsettled weather; it appears that passing showers and occasional pop up storm will be possible into the early afternoon. A more organized line of storms looks to propagate through the region from NW to SE. This will bring a new threat of storms with heavy rain, gusty wind and frequent lightning.

We park by the lake which came up several inches overnight, gather our paddles and push off. Usually we turn right first, heading for blueberry bushes hanging above the water. But today the bushes move, and another berry eater looks out of the thicket. A yearling whitetail buck, with rusty velvet covering its young antlers. Soft mobile nose. Alert eyes. And the berries he nibbles on are the last of the crop, for everybody has been feeding on them all summer: blacks bears, Green herons and Canada geese, chipmunks, squirrels — and us. We never take many, just enough to feel included at the lake's table, and we like their intense and tangy sweetness. Surely Mary Oliver has something to say about them?

She does, of course:

Picking Blueberries 

Once, in summer

in the blueberries, 

I fell asleep, and woke

when a deer stumbled against me.

I guess

she was so busy with her own happiness

she had grown careless

and was just wandering along

listening

to the wind as she leaned down

to lip up the sweetness.

So, there we were

with nothing between us

but a few leaves, and wind’s

glossy voice

shouting instructions.

The deer

backed away finally

and flung up her white tail

and went floating off toward the trees -

but the moment she did that

was so wide and so deep

it has lasted to this day; 

I have only to think of her - 

the flower of her amazement

and the stalled breath of her curiosity, 

and even the damp touch of her solicitude

before she took flight -

to be absent again from this world

and alive, again, in another

for thirty years

sleepy and amazed, 

rising out of the rough weeds

listening and looking.

Beautiful girl, 

where are you? 

©Mary Oliver

We move on, keeping Edy the canoe close to the lake's shore: this is where we are the least visible and disturb little. We see a young Green heron we noticed some weeks ago when he, still a fledgling, was trying to fly and kept crashing into the bushes. Then the larger of the two resident families of Canada geese -- our Periscopes -- floats out of a green eddy and swims close to us. The lake is warm and thousands of bluish bubbles cover its surface. They probably emerge from a cyanobacterial floating mat which trapped these miniature gas domes filled with the gaseous byproduct of the algal bloom, and may disappear during the day.  And these painted turtles on the log behind the geese? I want to see the turtles but John takes Edy among lily pads. He wants one, with -- as he calls it -- its heart of gold. Rendered in pixels. I do not have Mary's soaring words but I have my pixels, all these digital zeros and ones.

And there is a tiny baby turtle, sunbathing confidently on a lily pad: as it grows larger and heavier, it will need a solid sun porch. This one is perhaps three inches across and seemingly unafraid: it stays put as I lean out of Edy this way and that to avoid sun reflections on its smooth shell. 

In the meantime we lost the sight of our geese. Where did they go? Already by the east side of the lake, swimming in the same tight formation they held for several months. And soon they split: both parents and two big chicks swim left and come close to Edy, while one youngster turns right and takes a nap: an individual preference clearly stated. The chicks will stay with their parents for about a year and then take off and become adult birds of consequence.

Having made sure everybody is accounted for, we move to the sunny west side of the lake and look for more wildlife. Here are two dragonflies in their late summer lustful unison.  But we already know our home lake summer is almost over. We may still come and paddle and watch for a few days, and the life will continue. The showers held off this morning and the sky is still bright. But we are already sensing the slowing down movement of the season, clearly ebbing away and losing its "let's grow" explosions of passionate energy. It is different now, more contemplative and grounded. It is advancing like an avalanche loaded with small events which add up and change everything in a profound way. Day after day. Hour after hour. Rain after rain. 

Soon we will grab our folding canoe we named Julia and drive maybe north to Maine, and then west once the distant forest fires burn themselves out. Where? We have no idea but it will all take shape, slowly, as we go.

©Yva Momatiuk

Onteora

It is the beginning of August and the dog days of summer are hard upon us. Dog days? Since no reasonable canine would wish to sizzle in this heat and cook in the oppressively steamy air, I check the origin of the phrase. 

The phrase “Dog Days” conjures up the hottest, most sultry days of summer. The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists the traditional timing of the Dog Days: the 40 days beginning July 3 and ending August 11, coinciding with the heliacal (at sunrise) rising of the Dog Star, Sirius. The rising of Sirius does not actually affect the weather (some of our hottest and most humid days occur after August 11), but for the ancient Egyptians, Sirius appeared just before the season of the Nile’s flooding, so they used the star as a “watchdog” for that event. Since its rising also coincided with a time of extreme heat, the connection with hot, sultry weather was made for all time: “Dog Days bright and clear / indicate a happy year. / But when accompanied by rain, / for better times our hopes are vain.”

That much for the Almanac and its dog days. I am not a farmer, just a mere mortal who hates heat. I do not take kindly to any of this and already think winter thoughts. Deep cool snow drifts. Blue shadows. Hard nip of frost. Ice cracking. Fingers cold to the touch. Ah!

We have paddled on the soup-warm Onteora Lake for many days now, always in the morning to catch some cool breeze and see animals coming to drink or just be. But today we go late, close to sundown. It is still hot, sticky and not great. Never mind; we are pushing off, which consists of me crawling in first (my new hip is still maddeningly stiff) and John doing a young elephant maneuver and jumping right in from the back. We named our aluminum Canadian 14-foot long Radisson canoe Edy after its previous owner, who bought it after he retired with a sole purpose of paddling with his adult daughter when he was finally free to indulge his fatherly love. 

And unlike Julia, our folding 17-foot green-and-yellow canoe which went with us clear around the country last fall and created quite a sensation due to her unusual upside down umbrella principle, Edy is ordinary in appearance, simple in construction and ready for any punishment we may bestow on its hard body. We jump into it, smear Onteora Lake blueberries all over it, make it carry the garbage John fishes out of the lake, and drag it on coarse gravel. We also take Edy places, and tonight we let it float in the reflected clouds as much as he likes.

Soon the sun dips, fishermen pack their bags and leave, and we -- and the clouds -- stay. We know what animals we may meet because we have been here so often we seem to know every flying, sliding and walking creature, but as the evening thickens our chances of seeing any are dwindling. 

Edy moves well and we do not hurry; a paddle stroke here and there, no splash, just a gentle pull of the blade and a sense of the immediate conversion of our muscle power into a simple linear movement. We pass my favorite clump of ferns and grasses -- now fading in the stubborn heat -- when one of two families of Canada geese living on the lake slips out of the bushes just ahead of us. This is the larger of two clans: two parents and three chicks, almost as big now as adult birds. But instead of swimming away, the geese turn and approach us.  Closer. Closer. 

John speculates they are by now used to Edy and to us because we move gently and never push them. And maybe, like all wild animals, they calculate their potential risks and rewards, and -- in case of the Onteora geese -- they can tell boats apart and decide which may be more trustworthy. But -- coming closer? This is a very different chapter of behavior. Maybe when you fear less your curiosity can emerge and let your flat rubbery feet paddle closer for a better look? The geese stay around for a while and eventually swim slowly away as if making their point: all is well, and no speed is necessary. We look up, and see the still blue summer sky crowded with cumulus clouds flaming with warm hues of fire. 

And now a young beaver is crossing the lake on his way to the lodge; he may well be one of the newly weaned babies we saw only  a few weeks ago, swimming so close we could touch it with our paddles. There are three active home mounds along the lake and two are erected close together to accommodate a growing family: no strange unrelated beaver would dare to settle that close to the main lodge. 

It had been a good hour since we came and it is getting seriously dark. But here comes another resident of the lake and settles on a fallen maple trunk just a few paddle strokes from us: an adult Great blue heron in his rich breeding plumage tinted with rust. He perches. We float. No one moves. Time passes. It is very still and very quiet.

And as we paddle away, we see the last colors of the evening: sky high and slowly burning into the night.

©Yva Momatiuk

Roundout

After our recent float on the fat and glossy Delaware River whose current gathered strength after recent rains, we are seeking quiet waters much closer to home. The Delaware has its long and dam-free channel, its speedy shad and magical John McPhee's writings about its watery soul and the fish within. And the Roundout Creek, our home stream, is -- according to a fellow paddler -- easy, gentle and kind. 

The creek emerges from the slopes of Rocky Mountain in the eastern Catskills, rushes downhill and dives into the Roundout Reservoir, then emerges again and squeezes between the Catskills and the Shawangunk Ridge. Then it slows down on its way to High Falls, joins the Wallkill River and spills into the Hudson near Kingston, NY. It is 63 miles long and changes from its mountain-rambunctious headwaters to the already mentioned easy, gentle and kind stream, also known as flat water. But even flat waters can roar, and after prolonged rains our Roundout Creek does inundates backyards, streets and roads. A local geologist wrote that during one of the major floods, on Sunday, August 28, 1955, between midnight and noon when the rain was the heaviest, the creek rose from 10 to 27 feet and hit the flood stage at 6am. He noted that "folks went to bed with a normal river and woke up to raging floodwaters" which filled streets and basements of Rosendale, a village built partly on a natural floodplain.

That much for the kind stream and its sudden changes but I am curious what other paddlers discovered here. In his long ago written essay, "A Bed of Boughs," naturalist John Burroughs commented on the purity of the creek' waters and compared its transparency to that of the air. He drank from its cool pools, called their sun-dappled sheen the "untarnished diamonds" and concluded by saying: "If I were a trout, I should ascend every stream till I found the Roundout. It is the ideal brook."

No longer. In 2010, almost 3,000 tons of terribly contaminated soil were removed from the mouth of the creek. The area, full of boats and swimmers, was denounced by the state as the place presenting "a significant threat to public health or the environment." More appeals to clean the stream followed and still not much has been done. The pollution comes from a number of sources but the major contributor is the B.Millens Scrap Yard which leaches hazardous waste into the lowest stretch of the Roundout. Other hazards are more spotty and seasonal, and the recent drowning of a teenager in the fast current bellow the High Falls is just another in a series of swimming accidents along the creek. 

We have no plans to swim, so we just put our canoe in above the falls. And before I even find a good center of gravity on my seat, a mature bald eagle swoops above our heads. I follow the bird with my camera's lens but only the last picture, cropped by the bird slipping out of my frame and flying downriver, clearly reflects its passing but powerful presence.

©Yva Momatiuk 

Ebenezer Creek

We come to Ebenezer Creek in Georgia in late afternoon and it is already too late and the weather too iffy to assemble Julia and set out. And by now we are hurrying home anyway, aren't we? Or at least we should hurry, rather than poke around some marvelous mud holes and expand our list of very good reasons why we should delay our return to a more predictable life.

I walk along the creek, a tightly twisting tributary of the Savannah River, and move from one fluted tree to another, from a golden patch of hard sand to a bonsai skyline of cypress knees. I also think about a December day in 1864 when the Union soldiers under Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis crossed the swollen creek on a pontoon bridge and then cut it loose to prevented a large group of newly freed slaves from crossing as well. Caught between their unwilling defenders and the hostile Confederate cavalry riding on their heels, hundreds of ex-slaves, women, men and children, rushed into the icy creek, struggled, and drowned. 

Where did it happen? Maybe right here? Around this bend? This is a vast watery cemetery, now glided over by fishermen in noisy boats and tourists paddling candy-colored kayaks. A nearby family house with clapboard marked by green streaks of mold sports a Confederate flag. A red cardinal, a drop of blood in the thicket, vanishes and reappears. 

The night is coming and John and I drive away, toward tall cypress trees of South Carolina's Congaree National Park. It is now pouring thick dark rain which beats on our windshield. The road almost disappears and the trees flap madly in the wind. Glad we did not go and paddle. Happy to be dry.

But maybe we will come back next spring to this black creek, and pay our respects to the dead by floating really slowly, slowly and quietly? And then go on to the Okefenokee Swamp further west, the place that gave me my first bout of swamp love many years ago, and my first wild snake -- a large Indigo, in shades of midnight blue -- crawling up my warm body while I perched on a dry pine island.

©Yva Momatiuk

Living with genus Vespa

It is dark and windy, and I walk in an oak grove on a ridge between pewter cold lakes. The Turtle Mountains' woodland in North Dakota is thick with ash, quaking aspen, maple, elm and birch. But oaks, gnarly and spreading, stand out with their brown canopies of October foliage. I look for them: in this colorful forest of bright leaves they are monochromatic and solid, old and set in their ways. I search the branches with my lens and catch a glimpse of a grey swaying hive. Hornets' nest!

Too early in the season to get it down? Well, the nights are already freezing and we are near the Canadian border, so it should be fine. Too high to reach? The hive dangles maybe 17 feet above the clearing, and we have our camper. And John is tall and long limbed, so -- maybe?  Too early in our trip to burden ourselves with a large and delicate object, intricately constructed from saliva and dry wood shavings? Should it travel on our bed for another two months, for there is no other flat space large enough to accommodate its magnificence?

We already have three handsome hornet nests hanging in our house and this lovely hive would feel right at home. So just in case we could get it down and transport it safely I later mention it to John. We go and look, and yes, he wants it, too. But now I have second thoughts, so we call for a lunch break to think it over. The place in the nearby St.John is called N-8 Cafe -- for the owner's son, Nate -- and the soup of the day is listed as 'if available.' We ask, and it is. I check the life cycle of the genus Vespa on line, and there it is, as clear as a great fall day: the last workers in the hive die off in early November, good three weeks from now. No go. No hive. Not now. 

But on our way back to the forest John turns the camper straight into the clearing and parks it under the swaying object of my desire.

"Remember," I say, "it is too early. We cannot do it. It is their home." "I know," he says. "I do not want to take it down. I will just check if they are still there."

My wifely realism sounds a note of alarm. Why climb the camper roof in this sharp wind and struggle with the oak's porcupine of branches just to check? But his logic trumps mine, for what woman in love would say 'no' to this declaration of devotion: "I want to please you. And if it is empty, I want you to have it'."

In no time John climbs the camper and reaches the hive. He touches it, shakes it, listens to it, and then fishes out his Swiss army knife and gently detaches the hive from the stiff embrace of many branchlets the hornets used as its lofty foundation. Grateful, I intercept the offering which is as silent as any late in the season hive should be. Everybody left; the workers died off, and the queen is already burrowed somewhere in a soft rotten stump to survive the winter. If she lives, she will emerge as the world warms up and find a new location for a family home. This nest will not be recycled: soaked by cold rains and torn to pieces by winds it will disintegrate to smaller and smaller shreds, another Andy Goldsworthy-like opus of impermanence, devoted purely to procreation and the passage of time. 

The hive settles on our bed in the cold dark camper. Tomorrow we will return to N-8 Cafe, ask for a really large cardboard box, and mail it home. We will ask our friends Katherine and Richard who live there now to open the box and admire the hive, as we know they will. 

We walk around, photograph and smell the pewter ponds framed with golden aspens. Then night comes and we climb into our camper. John is downloading our pictures. I am starting a cauliflower soup, and the little space is now pleasantly light and warm. I open the refrigerator and there, on top of it, there are two dark and winged shapes sitting on our white pee bucket. Warmed by the cooking stove, alive and present. They look like miniature medieval warriors with horned helmets. 

Yes. It was too early. And we destroyed their home. Never mind they would soon die: they were not ready, and we did it.

The hornets are not even aggressive, just a bit dopey and disoriented, and I release them into the dark forest. Then I take the hive out and place it gently on the ground. Tomorrow we will hang it on another tree, a futile gesture of restitution which has no happy ending. I climb on our bed with a strong flashlight to search. I find no one else. But later I locate another one right by my foot, resting like a tiny domestic dog. This one has to leave, too, and we hope there will be no more.  

The morning brings light and warmth, and we go out to paddle in our Julia. The canoe slides across the blue Pelican Lake like a dry leaf, and we eat our lunch -- served on the paddle -- and drink our clear water from a big square bottle. We return early and unpack. The sun makes us lazy and warms the camper and ... oh no. Two more genus Vespa are already sitting on our water bottle in the sink. Where were they hiding? How many more? Are we surrounded? Should we surrender? Beg for forgiveness? Sprout wings and try to live their wild lives in order to appreciate what huge effort is needed to survive if you are a hornet? We search the camper again -- nothing -- but we sleep poorly.

The following night John is climbing into our bed when he spies a small elongated shape on the comforter cover. At first, his ingrained instinct is to see the ordinary and insist it must be a dark fluff from our thick socks. He wants to swipe it away but he confesses some frontal lobe neurology suggested he turned the light on first. Another hornet.

By now, I sleep with an EpiPen under my pillow. I know: our hornets are not hostile and warrior-like. They are tired, confused and lost, and I do not expect them to attack us. But if they are still in our bed and we roll on one or two, they would have to be saints to resist stinging us. And I am glad our EpiPen is a 2-pack variety: one for me, one for John.

Maybe the uncertainty and unknowing we still feel -- and will feel again tonight when we crawl into our bed -- is a fair price to pay for getting what we wanted when the seasons had not quite turned over and tumbled into winter.  Maybe it is good to feel a bit uneasy. 

©Yva Momatiuk

On the rocks

During the last few days we have been paddling in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and even nipped to Ontario for more lakes. But eventually the bad drizzly foggy and otherwise nasty weather pushes us south. 

Crossing the American Narrows on our way back to the US we run a maze of old railroad tracks, confusing industrial bridges spanning who knows what, and changing lanes which twist like dry spaghetti. The rain is still coming down in a cold nagging drizzle, the way it did all last week in Canada, and we are hoping for better paddling weather here. But this place does not look promising.  

"Have you ever seen a stranger border crossing?" asks John. The U.S. customs' officer does not look too good, either: pockmarked and somber, he offers none of the usual "welcome home" stuff. He takes our passports and asks about any fruit or vegetables we may have with us. John tells him we just ate our last two apples. 

"Any onions?" the guy asks, and his expression darkens.

Onions? Onions? How does he know? Yes, we do have one onion. Maybe, like John, I should offer the greatest possible information and tell him that being a crazy mushroom picker I carry onions and sour cream wherever I go. But this guy may be looking for a deeper meaning accessible only to him. Onion rockets? Onion bombs?

"What kind of onion?" he asks. This is getting slippery. "Red. It is a red onion. One," I stress. He startles a bit, as if this revelation confirmed his nasty suspicions, and waves us into a side bay. Two agricultural inspectors, both women, approach our truck. 

"So, you've got some onions?" one asks, knowingly. "What kind?

"Red onion," we reply in unison. "One. One onion."

She wants John to dig it out. He obliges and she eyes it critically. "Oh, it is red. That's OK," she says. "You can go." 

We wait until her co-worker opens a heavy barrier separating us from the free people who are allowed to keep all kinds of onions. The free people of International Falls, Minnesota. We roll into town and can tell by boarded up storefronts and front yards decorated mostly with old cars and appliances this place is down on its good luck. Large murals cover whatever they can. 

We need to look for the usual four: food, gas, water and propane. And: flu shots. A community pharmacy clerk calls the town's health department for us ("no, they are not from here, just traveling") and sends us to K-Mart. But what K-Mart! We are seated in two comfy chairs behind a red curtain, get help with filling out forms, and are allowed to select the arm (left) which we like to have stabbed. All done, we ask where we should go for lunch and two pharmacists deliver in unison: "Sandy's Home Cooking!" 

The home cooking place is a warm and crowded codgery. This is our name for back country cafes where old codgers sporting stretched suspenders and backs wrecked by decades of farming congregate daily for their refills of truly terrible coffee and some corner-of the-mouth gossip. There is a FREE WI-FI sign but not a single laptop, tablet or a smart phone anywhere in sight: are we in some foreign country? Here you talk. And eat stuff which is definitely bad for you but seems to put heat in your body and keep it there. 

Our warmth persists much of the dismal day, so when it suddenly stops drizzling and we find a rapids-free sweep of the Little Indian Sioux River meandering among tall reeds, we put in. Julia goes in the river first, then our gear, and we are off, upstream. Finally! 

Not really. Soaring over tall birches, pines and cedars, a flapping wing of rain overtakes us in no time. The rain comes down so fast we get drenched before we yank our rain gear from their dry sacks. For some idiotic reason, we try to flee and paddle like mad upstream to escape the deluge. I have to watch for barely submerged rocks but all I see are fat droplets whipping the river into an array of watery stalagmites, which raise and collapse like miniature pistons. Mesmerized, I want to photograph them, but we come to what appears to represent our senses, and turn back. John hoists Julia on the roof of the camper with seats still attached to speed things up. We throw our soaked gear in. And then it stops raining. Yes. And I do not even have a single picture of beautiful rain stalagmites. Subdued, we pull into a small forestry campground beneath a massive elephant rock. 

Morning is overcast. I read the campground's bulletin board and learn that Boundary Waters bears can recognize camping food coolers left unattended in cars. And they rip into vehicles to get to them. Smart bears. 

A man approaches our campsite and asks if he can cross it to get to the top of the elephant rock. He cradles in his arms a plastic bag filled with what looks like a fine grey gravel. His face is solemn and I suddenly know why he is here. 

"Is this what I think it is?" I ask, and he says yes: these are his mother's ashes. She loved this lake, these rocks, and used to come here often to hunt grouse. A crack shot, she liked to teach others how to do it well. Worked for Honeywell, supervising four engineers involved in the Gemini program and the Apollo. Met all the astronauts. Later in life she suffered congestive heart disease and had to move to a nursing home. But last time he called her she told him she could not talk because she was too busy: she was cooking dinner for all home residents. He managed to tell her he was clearing her house which needed to be sold, and she asked what he did with her bottles of bourbon. She had more than 40 of them stashed all over the place, and he already gave them to her friends. Ah, she said, that's good, but did you find an unopened vodka bottle? Yes, I did, and I put it in the freezer. Great, she said, just bring it over when you come on Sunday. And two hours later the home called because she died. So he will scatter her ashes on the rocks and go for a 35-mile hike. Three days.

I walk over and put my arms around him. "Thank you, Ma'am," he says simply, and I sense this is it. There will be no more words, just his short climb to the top of the elephant rock and the ritual of parting with what can still be touched of the woman who gave him life. She was a crack shot, and loved her bourbon, and this lake, and her life, too. We do not meet him again but late in the evening we climb the rock and see a grey layer of fine ashes scattered on a sloping ledge overlooking the darkening lake. 

"Goodnight, Mother," says John. 

His mother, too. And my own. Goodnight, Mothers. 

©Yva Momatiuk