Chapter 7: Boundaries and Waters

And a family of loons came to me in my dream and spoke in hooded whispers like a quivering wail that floats over shrouded hills. They told me stories of fog that had rolled onto waters still as polished mirrors, and how this fog spilled into my mind, mixing sanity with insanity in a turbid mess of thoughts.  - b.c.d.

Dreams had riddled my night as they always did. I awoke to the comforting campfire smells and sounds of the sizzle and snap of bacon fat, rough coffee grounds swirling in their heated aluminum cups, and an eerie chorus of mallards and loons gliding over glass-smooth Minnesota waters. For a moment I couldn't place the calls in reality or in my dreams, but the impossibly cheerful face of my father poking through the front tent flaps convinced me quickly that I was indeed awake; that another day of endless paddling and dusk flavored hot cocoa was in store. 

"The perfect day!" he said animatedly, grabbing my ankle and shaking it for extra emphasis. "Up and at 'em!"

"Uhhhhgggh," I responded eloquently to no one in particular. My sleeping bag still held me in its warm cocoon embrace, and the way my father's breath still lingered in my tent after his disembodied head disappeared outside told me there was no rush to get up. In fact, getting up seemed pretty overrated at the moment, and I rolled over in an attempt to slip back into my dreams...their cries echoed in ripples of rapture across the lake in my brain and it was not until I felt the curling icy fingers of these waters slip around my ankles and hold firm that I realized it was only a dream, and I heard the sirens smooth laughter as they receded into depths I cannot understand...

Fully awake now, I could see the hard V of my tent's vinyl roof ruffle slightly in the rising morning's wind. I didn't know whether to be more stunned that I had survived the siren's song another night, or that my dad had let me sleep an extra half hour. "Incredible," I muttered to myself, unwillingly unzipping the sleeping bag in a reluctant gesture that let out my snug warmth and dreams simultaneously. A burst of sound, flurry of movement and explosion of energy found my brother in the tent suddenly, yelling,"A bear, a bear! It came to our campsite last night, did you hear it? Did it bump into your tent like it did to ours?!" 

"Uh, something else visited me," I responded, half-awake still and oblivious to the startled mouth of my brother stopped mid-sentence. "Their fingers were freezing and songs warm," I mumbled while I got dressed, ignoring my brother's "whatever" as he back out into the thin morning sunlight, heading eagerly to chop wood for the campfire.Outside, one of my cousins had already begun the careful process of extracting a leech caught from an early morning swim, my brother swung a hatchet happily over hapless pieces of pine-wood, and my father sang hymns softly to himself while turning pieces of crisp bacon and popping morning sausage. The air, notes playing through trees like a soft woodwind symphony, and tinged with moss, thin smoke, and tree-sap came and swirled around my head in a perfect good morning tune. I saw strong sunshine seep and wink through thousands of branches from oak, maple and pine trees, leaping into areas previously covered in darkness. I saw our family's four eight foot long canoes resting upside down against each other a little above the water line like a jumbled group of yellow slices of watermelon. I sensed rather than understood, the tranquility of these waters with their ripples expanding out wider and wider as I dipped my feet in a shallow part clear and slick with river slime. I was not to know until much later how violent peace can be.

It came languidly, the way a depressing day slouches towards you and before you realize it are locked in a firm embrace with sadness. We had been paddling for four hours, hat brim jammed down low to shade the wrinkles formed from squinting into a blazing day reflected in a million dancing stars winking at me from the water. Sunscreen, now baked and old, gave the sweat on my arms a tangy smell, and occasionally I rested the paddle between my legs and dipped my arms up to my elbows into the cool surface of the lake to stay sane. We were strung out like an army line formation gone wrong, crooked and out of place, with my father and I "bringing up the rear" as he would call it. It was because of this position in line that I kept looking backwards or down at the sides, expecting someone or something to be following us. Did sirens attack the lost, sick or old, like lions to a stray wildebeest? Did you hear their songs before or after you're swept downwards into the water? Was their beauty as ravishing under the water as above? I could not answer these questions, and despite an unhealthy amount of imaginative curiosity for someone my age, did not want to find out. Too young for the anchor position, I had been placed in the front of the canoe, and glancing back for the eighth time to reassure myself there were no fins dipping in and out of the now slightly nervous waters, it was then my jaw went slack. My father is a man of extreme wisdom, and I credit him even now with not saying a panicked word to me as he quickly double-checked what had surprised me, and began to untie the strapped down ponchos, tossing mine into trembling hands. Where before the sky had been painted an extreme shade of lapis lazuli, it now frothed and churned itself into the same color I saw when raking out dead ashes from our fireplace at home. A few hundred meters ahead, I saw the rest of our two families pulling in their paddles post-haste as they heeded the warning calls from my dad bellowing above the rising wind. 

"Cinch the straps tight as they go!" he yelled, his paddle making small cyclones in the water as he shot our canoe forwards, strong angles meant for movement and not finesse. I could see my sister's scared eyes, and my mom's hair now clinging to her neck from the fine mist preceding the boiling mess behind us. "Head for that island at two o'clock" he roared to my uncle in the front of our line, miserably holding small ground as the wind began swirling in different directions like the times I watched my mom's spatula spinning and mixing cookie dough. Except this was black dough, and we were in the bowl. My brother's small yet strong frame leaned into the pull of the paddle, making inches of headway even as the wind pushed him a few more back. Our own canoe made small headway, yet we inched forwards even as the winds went still, and it was then I heard the singing. Locked into a rowing positing, fighting the current and feeling raindrops the size of small black beetles hit the back of my neck, I looked down and saw them. Sinuous shapes coiling and uncoiling beneath the surface, flicking and flipping their way around and below our canoes. I thought I had gone crazy, even as the storm broke into its full fury, unleashing walls of rain so thick I could only see ten feet in front of me. The island my father had pointed out moments earlier now seemed a distant dream, while beneath me reality spun and swam its way closer to the surface, melodies intertwining themselves skillfully between the rain, thunder and thunk of my paddle ceaselessly moving to pull us forwards. At least I thought I was paddling, though my dad later on told me, under a pine tree's branches heavy with rain, that he saw me, incredibly calm, reach my hand into the water as if to grab something that had sunk just out reach. My half-hooded eyes belied the maelstrom and panic around me, seduced by something he could not understand. 

The landing jarred me, throwing me and the clump of sea-grass clenched tightly in my hand onto the sand swiftly turning to mud below our canoe. Leaping forwards, over plastic-wrapped canvas bags and tightly rolled tents, my father came down beside me and helped me up from where I had fallen, back on the shore, legs bent over the gunwale in weird angles. I stared intently at the grass I held tightly in my fist, whispering "I almost had them, gorgeous songs, emerald-green hair..." My father half-dragged me and the canoe up the shore, abandoning me and my mutterings to help the others fight their way onto an embankment quickly disappearing.

They came again that night. Later this time, deeper. My sub-conscious slaved itself to their songs, and I sank further into her warmth.

---

Last night  in my dreams my wrinkled palm opened. Slowly 

inching towards loss in a nameless way; I saw her –

absorbed in an ash-gray house –

charcoal and green vines.smoke.stones.

drifting quietly across my blind nightmares...  

she found my nightmares laughable,

crinkled her eyes in mirth

"no matter for the morning queen,” teasing

            - stepping into the midnight house.

swirling into an eternity lasting seconds in my embrace.

Now I'm a widow to this swirling mass, witness to an exquisite universe spiraling in my wrinkled palm.

So vast, so vast my morning storm.