Last Summer’s Water Shortage in the Klamath Basin
APRIL
During last summer’s water shortage in the Klamath Basin, I was living out of my van, a little down in the dumps about my situation because my girlfriend had died, and, you know, I was living out of my van. Actually, she hadn’t died. If anyone ever asked it was just easier to say she died. She had black hair and green eyes, or rather, platinum blonde hair and blue eyes, or maybe it was brown hair and hazel eyes. What I’m getting at is that her hair color changed a lot. An explanation for why her eyes changed color? Maybe she wore different color contact lenses. Or maybe her eyes changed color with her moods, or the seasons, or possibly her menstrual cycles. She had started slutting it out with a bunch of ignorant sleazy men who probably had venereal disease. I told people my girlfriend drowned in a lake, in Crater Lake. If anyone asked, I said she slipped on the rim, fell down the caldera, and drown in the cold, deep, waters of Crater Lake. Portland, Salem, Eugene, Roseburg. My van was a Chevy Astro-Van. I removed the back seats which left ample room for living and sleeping in the automobile. Grants Pass, White City, Gold Hill, Jacksonville, Ashland. I used to see her, my dead girlfriend, she used to wake me up when I was sleeping. In my sleep she’d whisper my name. I’d open my eyes and find her kneeling at my bedside. She’d say, “hello.” The sight of her gave me an erection. She smelled like citrus, or she smelled like cloves, or she smelled like melons. She asked me, “What are you doing?” I told her, “I’m sleeping in my van.” She touched my shoulder, my face, then smoothed over my hair. Prospect, Shady Cove, Fort Klamath. Her touch sent a bag of hot worms squirming in my guts. It was agony to envision her with other men. I was not becoming unhinged. The Pacific Northwest, Oregon, the Coast, the Cascade Range, the Klamath Basin, Crater Lake up there in the National Park, it all became a dreamscape the summer of the water shortage. A disassociation with the world was a necessary adaptation to cope with the mania and natural disasters that were to ensue through the summer months.
I didn’t believe in fate, but I had to have something to blame for stopping broke down and busted flat in the carcass of an American West that was once so adventurous and promising. The two bit town of Fort Klamath used to be an actual fort, built in 1862 to protect the influx of lean pioneers from the rightfully hostile and bloodthirsty Klamath and Modoc natives. In Klamath Falls, there was a mural of many mustachioed men wearing top hats posing beside a steam engine. The good news was there were plenty of nearby campgrounds and desolate pull-offs where I could park my van to sleep for the night and no one would bother me.
I’m a plumber by trade, or that’s what I say I am now, is a plumber. Up in Portland I had a job roofing and cleaning gutters. That lasted for a while until I got a promotion, and when I say promotion, I mean I quit that got and got a job pressure washing instead. I pressure washed factory floors and grease traps and stuff like that. Things went pretty well for a while until the whole thing with you-know-who happened, and I had to skip town. I ended up in Southwest Oregon, because that’s how far my money got me if I still wanted to eat.
Yet there was a strange majesty to the region. As if the junction towns and flea bag Motels were little more than a scarring of athlete’s foot on the Madonna that is the Cascade Range. Beyond the Indian-run casinos, secret rivers curved in the shadows of royal peaks. Ponderosa Pine forests stood guard over emerald lakes.
Not that I was an ardent environmentalist. Sure, when I lived back in Portland with my girlfriend that died, we spent days at the Washugal, or along the Columbia River gorge, or hiking through Forest Park, and all that shit. But like any good young Portlander, I was always coated in a slime of hand rolled cigarette smoke and cheap beer sweat. I liked my hot coffee in the morning, my TV all afternoon and my cheap beer all night. Yeah, I liked beer a lot, and beer liked me. Beer liked me so much that I decided we needed a break from each other right after I took flight from the city of roses and water fountains. I was so stone-stumped in my dirty little Stumptown neighborhood, I never realized the Lost World that was so easily accessible by heading South on Interstate 5.
It was rough going at first. I mostly slummed around Klamath Falls. The early spring was all drizzle and loneliness. Wandering on foot, I’d pick up half-smoked cigarettes from the sidewalk in the depressing shopping districts of Washburn Way, Main Street, and South 6th street. 7th street had a Dutch Brothers coffee with a porch and a walk-up service counter in addition to the drive through. The beautiful redhead who worked the afternoon shift was very sweet to me. She gave me free refills and sometimes even bummed me cigarettes. I sat on the porch for hours, wallowing in my self-pity, and she never chased me off or threatened to call the cops. I’d even stay sitting out there when the cruelest month of April blew fits of drizzle and sleet. Exposure to the elements would make my Astro-van all the more warm and cozy when I returned to it.
I even managed to make some friends, Freddy and Joy and their four children that all looked dirty and poor. Freddy kept his long black hair pulled back in a pony tail. He wore t-shirts with their sleeves cut off. I never saw him without an open beer in his hand, and when that one was empty, he’d toss it and pull a fresh one from the diaper bag, which seemed to be filled with an endless supply of beer, slung over his shoulder. Joy wore tube tops. The whole family descended from Klamath Modoc tribes, they lived out in Chiloquin. As best I could tell, they got checks from the government, because neither Freddy or Joy ever gave mention of a job. I don’t think their kids went to school either, because the crew stopped by to shoot the breeze in the middle of weekday mornings. Freddy came along with his daughter holding his hand. Joy, pushing an infant in its stroller with one hand, holding her son against her hips with her other arm. Their oldest child followed close in tow.
“Hiya Freddy. What’s the good word?”
“Oh, not much. Just getting by, day to day.”
“Oh, I hear you.” Freddy offered me a beer. I declined. “Hi Joy, hi kids.” Joy said hi to me. The kids didn’t. They always stared at me with sad wide eyes. “Say Freddy, I’m still looking for work.” Freddy and Joy knew I was unemployed and lived out of my van, but they didn’t seem the least bit put-off or judgmental about it. “You haven’t heard of any openings, have you?”
“No, I haven’t, sorry to say. I’ll keep my ear to the ground, though.”
“Thanks man, if you hear anything, let me know. Hey, I think I got some granola bars for your kids.” I rummaged in the bag in my van and doled out the four granola bars to Freddy and Joy’s children.
“What do you say?” Joy hinted to her kids. All responded in unison with a meek ‘thank you.’ I could tell they weren’t pleased, and probably wanted something more along the lines of a Snickers.
We’d talk about the weather, or sports. Freddy was an Oakland A’s fan, while Joy rooted for the Marlins. It was a shame I didn’t fish, because Freddy told me all his secret sweet spots.
Then Freddy said, “I guess we better me moving along.”
I watched them go. The young family, Freddy Joy and their four children that looked dirty and poor. Their bodies got smaller over the expanse of asphalt, and were finally gone. I was alone. I experienced the profound emptiness of speaking with someone, then watching them leave, then being alone.
At night I’d lay awake in the Astro-van and listen as rain dribbled on the roof and wind wooshed against the windows. The misery of my past mistakes and fuck-ups marched in a spiteful parade through my memory. I could’ve always turned back to the bottle, but I knew by that point not even the mistress old lady alcohol, try as she might, could comfort me like she used to.
A want-ad caught my eye in the paper the next day. It read:
PLUMBER WANTED
Subcontracted Government work in and
around Crater Lake National Park.
The less experience the better.
An open mind and willingness to compromise
are an absolute must.
It seemed like a good fit, so I called the number. My interview consisted of three questions.
A stern yet sophisticated voice over the line asked, “Have you ever served in any branch of the United States Military?”
“No sir.”
“Good. ‘Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die.’ That kind of mantra makes for weak employees. The solider is not a thinking man. He wouldn’t piss with his pants on fire unless ordered to by a ranking officer. Did you vote for Bonzo?”
“Bonzo?”
“Ronnie Regan.”
“No sir. I wasn’t alive during his presidency. Or if I was, I wasn’t old enough to vote.”
“That son of a bitch was the worst thing to ever happen to this country. Are your people around here?”
“People?”
“Kin, family. Were you brought up in the region?”
“No sir. I drove down here from Portland Oregon. I’d lived in that city going on three years now, but I grew up in St. Cloud Minnesota.”
“Minnesota. Nordic tracks of Prairie. Broad-chested women. Blue-eyed boys. 10,000 lakes in the forest. You answered all the questions right, so it sounds like a good fit to me. When can you start?”
MAY
I reported for duty at the administration building in Crater Lake National Park. The cramped front office had bulletins and announcements pertaining to the region papered all over the walls. Behind the counter, a young lady with acorn skin and long black hair sat perched over the CB microphone.
“Can I help you?” She smiled at me. All her teeth were crooked. She had a smile like a sunbeam.
“I’m going to be working around here, doing some plumbing. The service, I believe, has been subcontracted out by the National Parks.”
“Oh, yes, of course. You’re the help that’s been hired on by Mr. Posthualwhey.” She contacted him over the CB, “Mr. P to Larkynn, over.”
“Larkynn to Mr. P, go ahead, over.” I heard the voice of my future boss crackle over the radio.
“There’s a young man here, who says he’s to be working with you, over.”
“Okay. You bet. Tell him to sit tight. I’m on my way to the ad. min. building right now, over and out.”
Again, Larkynn smiled at me. “Mr. Posthualwhey asks you to sit tight, and says he’s on his way to the ad. min. building right now.”
“Okay, yeah, I heard him over the radio. While I was standing right here.”
Larkynn didn’t say anything, but just continued to look at me and smile. I thought that if I pretended to read the many bulletins, she might ignore me and start stapling papers or talking on the radio or whatever her job was. She didn’t. She just kept staring at me and smiling.
“Larkynn, is it? That’s a pretty name.”
“Why, thank you sir. I’m named after the Larkynn River. My grandpa named me. I’m Klamath Modoc Native American.”
“Oh, yes, that’s nice. It must be reassuring to have such rich culture and tradition in your family.”
“Oh, it is. My mom used to be a tweaker, though. My grandpa’s an alcoholic.”
“We’ve all got a cross to bear, I guess.”
“Will you still be working here in August? That’s when we have our big pow-wow. It’s the 23-25 at the Chiloquin football stadium. Are you coming to the pow-wow?”
“I hadn’t planned that far ahead, but I’ll try to clear some room in my schedule.”
“You’re very lucky to be working here.”
“I’m optimistic.”
“This land is sacred to my people.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Larkynn, and try to show the proper respect and reverence during my time here as a plumber.”
He walked through the door, and that’s when I first laid eyes on that beautiful man Mr. Posthualwhey. The first thing he said was, “Jesus Christ, son. You look like a hobo dressed in those rags. Have you been sleeping out of your car?”
I tried to laugh that off and mush-mouthed out, “umm, I guess there were no specifications about work dress.”
He looked slick and clean in green and beige. The olive pants and tan button-up shirt both crisp and pressed sharp as knives. A man of six feet, he carried his paunch well. He had a face that conveyed it’d seen the world, with grandfatherly bushy eyebrows, and a sharp Sherlock nose. His eyes had the razor blue color of intelligent restlessness.
Larkynn scrounged me up the same green and beige outfit from some box in a closet. The olive pants were too baggy around my ass. The sleeves of the beige shirt were too short, and stopped an inch above my wrists. I didn’t care. After a long dismal spell of unemployment and heartbreak, I was a man in uniform at my first day on the job. Not just any job or uniform either. I was in the earth tones of the National Park Service. I was there to check the pipes and unclog the toilets in one of the best patches of land our nation had to offer. Mr. Posthualwhey gave me a pat on the back and said, “There you go, son. You look good enough to eat,” then we were off to work.
I rode shotgun in Mr. Posthualwhey’s immaculately clean pick-up truck. It only took a few days on the job for me to realize, Mr. Postualwhey’s appearance was so neat and his truck so pristine because we never did any work, not in those early months at least. Even in May, it was cold on top of the mountain. The roads were clear, but there was still 15 feet of snow on the ground. The North Entrance and the East Rim Drive were closed due to weather. So our shifts were spent doubling back and forth from the North Junction to the Ponderosa Picnic area. Sometimes we’d stop at Rim Village and cruise past the Lodge. Mr. P. talked a lot.
“Do you remember my criteria for new hires?”
“The phone conversation was brief, but I recall something about Bonzo and the military.”
“The solider is not a thinking man. Some people call it loyalty, I call it blind obedience. That kind of conformity and unquestioning faith in leadership always leads to massacres and genocide. In short, brutal hysteria.”
This candor and complete obliviousness of professional protocol was off-putting, but also refreshing. I said, “Many are called, few are chosen. You didn’t serve then, I gather?”
“I did my part to make the world safe for democracy.”
“You worked at a munitions plant? You paid your taxes? You bought war bonds?”
“I worked in the pickle factory. 25 years in the field and five behind a desk.”
“A public sector pickle factory?”
“Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA.”
“Wow,” I said. “The CIA. That’s intense. I bet you’ve got some stories.”
“You bet wrong. I asked people questions and they gave me answers. Then I’d pass the information to the higher ups, and they’d use it to chase their tails until something blew up or a war was started somewhere. Then we’d begin the whole process all over again.”
It was clear what side of the fence he was on. “At least you got to travel. I bet it gave you an opportunity to see the world.”
“If you mean travel to the most hellish places on earth and see the innocents get manipulated, then yes. It gave me the opportunity to travel and see the world. One thing I did learn, mankind is solely driven by fear and greed. I could tell you more, but I’d have to kill you.”
YIKES! I certainly didn’t want that.
After starting my new job, I had the same dream night after night. As the nights piled on top of each other, the dream grew in intensity, until it was less like a dream and more like a memory. It started out the same. An idyllic forest scene, the ground all carpeted with moss and pine needles, tall trees, their boughs providing puddles of shade; filtering shafts of sunlight. The whole deal. Then I felt a rumbling through the ground that announced cold, hunger, and darkness. The sun never rose. Ash fell from the sky. The ground belched liquid fire.
Like the most terrifying of dreams, a visceral fear penetrating the safety of my slumberland was far more terrifying than the actual dream. I awoke from it with the great notion that the earth was no longer the stable provider I had always known, but instead a realm of black magic with intent to test and confuse the meek and humble.
Work continued with Mr. Posthualwhey and me cruising through the park in his pick-up truck. Throughout the shifts he rambled on about international affairs or his political views or flaws in the CIA’s operations. A conspicuously absent potion of his conversation was family. Which lead to wild speculation on my part about divorces, secret lovers, and estranged children. Maybe he’d hired me on to fill an emotional role as friend and/or surrogate son.
Gray clouds sat on the mountain through most of May. Our visibility on the road was never more than 15 or 20 feet. Four way mixtures of rain, hail, sleet and snow pelted the windshield. Looking back, it’s strange that I hadn’t realized it then, but I’d been working in the park for weeks without once ever setting eyes on the lake from which the National Park got its name. Crater Lake was hidden under opaque mists of menacing spring.
One morning I showed up for work at the ad. min. building, then Mr. Postualwhey and me hopped in the pick-up and set off up the East Rim Drive.
“I hope you brought some good walking shoes today,” he said. “How long have you been working with me?”
“Almost four weeks.”
“You plan to stay through the summer, don’t you?”
This line of inquiry was making me nervous. “Yes. Very much so, I like this job.”
“Good. That’s all I need to hear. If we’re going to be working together, you’ll have to find out sometime. Especially considering the way this snow has been melting off so fast.”
“I’ll have to find out what?”
“Larkynn has more right to be on this mountain than any of us. This National Park is more than a patch of land to her and her people. Crater Lake is sacred.”
“I’m a cynic, Mr. Posthualwhey, and kind of godless. I just can’t get on board with all this spiritual stuff.”
“I’m not asking you to. The Klamath were here to witness Mount Mazama erupt. They watched the devastation slowly turn into something beautiful.”
“What are you trying to say here?”
“I don’t know what I’m tying to say. Change is not always progress, but change in the only constant. How do we change responsibly when we don’t know what the consequences of our change will be?” He pulled onto the shoulder of the North Junction. Up ahead, the East Rim gate was closed and locked. Mr. Postualwhey fished out a key and handed it to me. “Do me a favor, and unlock that gate, son. I’m going to pull through, then close it up, and be sure to lock it for me, will’ya.”
So I did as he asked, slid back into the passenger seat.
“I don’t know what I meant when I said all that stuff about responsible change,” he commented as we drove on. “I’m just working through some inner turmoil, I guess.”
Shit man, I quit drinking. I left a toxic relationship with someone I really cared abou – I mean, my girlfriend died. I guess I was trying to sort through the same ‘inner turmoil’ of ‘change’ and ‘progress.’ Why did Mr. Posthualwhey have to get all heavy and serious? I was just happy to have a job as a plumber.
We pulled to the shoulder, and Mr. Posthualwhey got out of the truck. “C’mon, kid. Follow me,” he called.
I tagged along as we left the roadside and headed towards Grouse Hill. The snow was still deep. Trudging through, it came up past my knees. I was surprised though, at how fast it had melted off considering there was 15 feet not even three weeks ago.
“Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States of America,” Mr. Posthualwhey said as we walked. “Its water is the cleanest, freshest, and purest in the world.” We passed through a patch of pine trees. “It’s estimated there’s enough water in the lake to give every single, living, human being on earth 700 gallons each. The water’s cycle of replenishment is still rather mysterious, although it’s widely believed the lake slowly looses half of its volume through ground seepage into Annie Spring, while being simultaneously replenished by rain and snowmelt. Thus, maintaining its purity and depth. Mother Nature is a wonder to behold, isn’t she?” He stopped at a spigot at the end of a pipe raising a foot vertically out of the ground. “Go ahead, turn the handle.”
I turned the handle. A gurgle whispered through the nozzle. It lasted a few moments while Mr. Posthualwhey stood watching.
“Be patient,” he said. “It has a long way to travel.”
Then the spigot belched out a steady column of water.
Mr. Posthualwhey was smiling. “Annie Spring provides water to most of the Klamath Basin. Why pan for gold when you can mine the vein? This little spigot here is my experiment. It was my taproot. Go ahead, take a sip.”
I cupped my hand under the nozzle, then brought the water to my lips.”
“That, my friend,” Mr. Postualwhey said raising his eyebrows, “came right out of Crater Lake.”
What an odd duck. A spigot in the middle of nowhere that spits out water from Crater Lake? So what? Big deal. The way he’d been building it all up on the drive and the walk over, I was expecting a fountain of nothing less than Kool Aide piped in from Jonestown. But then again, I didn’t have the vision that Mr. Posthualwhey did.
That afternoon, Mr. Posthualwhey took me to Beckie’s for lunch, his treat. Their food is so-so, (I had a tuna melt) but their pie is world famous. I’d recommend the Marion berry with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
“There’s an opportunity you and I can make a lot of money, but I need to know I can trust you.”
He had me at ‘money.’ “Of course.”
Mr. Posthualwhey leaned over the table and whispered, “Conditions are right this’ll be the year to cash in. The Park Service is clamoring the snow has been melting too fast. They’ve already put a call out for water conservation methods in park operations. Down at city hall, a contingency plan is being drawn up as we speak. A triage, by district, of what residences and business, and in what order, will have their water cut off. All I can tell you now is I’ve set up an ‘Irrigation Supply and Consultant Company’ with a P.O. box in Klamath Falls, and I’ve built a small facility off highway 230 in the Umpqua National Forest.”
“Sure. Seems pretty ambitious, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering you’re ex-CIA.”
“Don’t remind me. Now those guys are some real crooks.”
Crooks? Who said anything about crooks? I was just excited to be brought in the business venture at the ground level.
JUNE
Big storms came through early in the month, and lightening strikes planted forest fires in Southwest Washington, also South and Central Oregon. It wasn’t too much to loose sleep over, but the forest fires did grow with patient persistence, always spreading a bit too much to be classified as ‘maintained’. They didn’t consume neighborhoods and cities, but they taunted residents with a char scent.
Other than that, things were going great for me. I should’ve had it made in the shade. Sure, we worked hard, sometimes seven days a week, but I had nothing better to do. Mr. Posthualwhey paid me in cash, stacks of crisp bills. The odd thing was, the stacks got disproportionably thicker to my hours worked.
My dreams got worse. The meanings and visuals were more abstract, but also all the more horrifying. It fell upon me right before I went to sleep, in that transition with my eyes closed but my mind not quite drifted away. I saw a panoramic mountainscape. At its furthest horizon, all along the peaks and valleys, in an unending stretch east to west, a thin ribbon of ember orange fire blazed in the immensity of wilderness night. The fleeting vision was barely long enough to be remembered before I sank into otherwise dreamless slumbers.
So Mr. Posthualwhey’s ‘facility’ was a shed, or the ‘pumphouse’ as I affectionately called it. He’d built the thing off 230 in the middle of the Umpqua National Forest, and I mean way, way off 230. From the highway, I had to drive at least 15 or 20 miles down a narrow dirt road, branches scraping against my van, until it dead-ended at the pumphouse. Unless you were looking for Mr. Posthualwhey’s little booth on the side of the road, you wouldn’t even know it was there. You see, he sat up there with his invoices and calculator and walkie-talkie, while I was back in the pumphouse with another walkie-talkie, sitting on a stool, by a machine, or, the pump. It took up half the shed. The hydraulics were big as Roman columns, protruding through the roof another ten feet. A diesel generator powered the pumps, and when I fired that thing up, and the pumps got to working, it sounded like rounds of cannonade firing over a rumbling freight train. Two hoses ran from the pump. Big hoses. Hoses like fire hoses, or hoses used to fuel B-52s. They screwed into two nozzles on the pump, then ran the 15 or 20 miles down the dirt road, to Mr. Posthualwhey’s booth on the side of the highway. Considering the heavy machinery and noise, my job was pretty easy. When Mr. Posthualwhey called over the walkie-talkie, “alright, let’er loose,” I flipped a lever to on. The pumps pumped whatever it was they were pumping out of the ground, through to hoses, to whatever it was Mr. Posthualwhey had them pumping into at the other end. When he called over the walkie, “alright, cut’er off,” I flipped the lever to off. The pumps stopped pumping, and I awaited instructions to repeat the whole process all over again. I did it all through the night. Mr. Posthualwhey and I only worked at night. That was my job. I was well compensated. Compensated a little too well. So well compensated, and all in cash too, that I knew better than to ask any questions.
Sometimes curious chipmunks skittered in through the baseboard cracks. I left them crumbs of food. They got bolder as the weeks went by. Some came right up to my stool and sat up. They rubbed their noses and twitched their whiskers as if politely introducing themselves.
It was supposed to be a reward. It was supposed to be a fun special little treat for all our hard work. Finally, a chance to experience the natural wonder that I’d been too preoccupied to enjoy previously. It would have been fun. It would have all been perfect, if not for some cruel twist of fate which put that shithead Buckley there too. It was embarrassing how much she’d done a number on me. A man with thicker skin and stronger backbone who’d heard the news from the Shithead Buckley, could’ve brushed it off and walked away, saying, “That’s not my life anymore. That doesn’t concern me in the least.” I, unfortunately, am not the man.
I met Mr. Posthualwhey at Cleetwood Cove for our complimentary two hour boat tour of Crater Lake. I couldn’t have asked for better weather. It was breezy and warm with a cloudless blue sky. We filed onto the long, open-topped boats. Mr. Posthualwhey and I sat on the linoleum bench in the back. Buckley sat in the middle of the boat next to some guy with dreadlocks, who I assumed was his partner in crime. That shithead kept craning his neck and squinting in my direction to see if I was who he really thought I was. I slouched in the bench and stared out over the water. The outboard thundered to a start, we pushed off from the docks and set out on the lake.
Our guide, a strawberry blonde Park Ranger, had the physique and skin-tone of a volleyball all-star (and in that uniform, forget about it, I was done for. Looking at her made my teeth sweat). She stood at the helm, speaking into a microphone, and conducted the tour with such grace, humor, and charisma, that she could’ve better put her looks and talents to use as a National morning news anchor.
The water lapped and rolled in swaths of glinting aquamarine. The encircling caldera was all beige and pitted, as if I was in the center hole of a giant angel food cake. Ranger Jenny (our lovely guide had introduced herself to the tour as Ranger Jenny), pointed out Llao Rock. It was caused, she informed us, by magma pushing through cracks and cooling before the magma chamber roof had collapsed. We cruised past Wizard Island, which Ranger Jenny informed us was a cinder cone, caused by a series of smaller eruptions over several hundred years. She pointed out Phantom Ship, aptly named, because the spindly rock formation looked like a sunken phantom ship’s masts protruding out from the water. It was an ecological miracle, Ranger Jenny told me, because on that slice of rock grew five different types of pines, and several varieties of lichens. We pulled into Chaski Bay where waterfalls of snowmelt spittled from hanging vegetation on the caldera wall. Color, color, color. That was the source of the lake’s hypnotic power. Our captain cut the outboard, and we drifted closer to the waterfalls. The mixture of water created wonderful shades of teal diffusing to emerald. We were even lucky enough to see the Old Man, a giant tree trunk that’s been drifting in the lake through all recorded memory. We pulled alongside the floating stump. I peered over the bow, and saw the length of the trunk, all 30 feet of it, filtered ghostly gray through the water. At its bottom, a tangled bulb of its root structure, like mini-tentacles paddling it along.
Our tour completed and the boat pulled back into dock at Cleetwood Cove. The crowd shuffled off, and much to my chagrin, that shithead Buckley lingered ashore by the snack booth, waiting for me to s