Swamp Boy

Today my son Rob turns 25.  Each year at Christmas, instead of giving loved ones presents, I give each person a word.  And then write a comment accompanying that word explaining the reason why. This past year, the word 'tenacity' spoke to me for Rob. I've never seen a goal that he has not doggedly pursued. And his hard work pays off.

My birthday present to him is a memory that he stars in and  also speaks of tenaciousness. Here's to you Rob...and for everyone else, a sneak vignette of my next 'pleasurable pause' book reflecting life on Pleasant Lake--

Swamp Boy

My son Rob once informed us when we picked him up from a YMCA summer camp renowned for its outdoor adventure programs, “You know, I am not really that fond of Nature”.  And I believe I know the moment in his life when he had this revelation.  And in some ways, I can’t blame him. The day he decided Nature wasn’t his friend is also the day I declared him my hero.

For several years, the Larson family checked into the Shelter as our guests.  The first year, Robby, who was twelve, met Alison, who was eleven, he offered to show the Larsons the lake. And all 72 pounds of him insisted on commanding Matthew’s granddaddy kayak as he led an entourage of canoes, kayaks and one paddle boat off on their great explore. Imagine my surprise when the contingency all returned minus one large green kayak and one fearless leader.  I could not get in my kayak fast enough when I heard the reason why.                                                                                                       

We have a ‘nursery’ at the lake….an inner sanctum bay that one arrives to by going through the ‘secret passage’.  It’s where the Sand Hill cranes, Great Northern herons, assorted turtles and hundreds of other species of both fauna and wildlife congregate to raise their young, feed, and find sanctuary.  It becomes almost jungle-like, teaming with percolating boggy clumps and thick-as-carpet water lilies by the time August arrives. Paddling through the dense pads and tunnels of towering cat tails and marsh grasses reminds me of some far Asian growing field—definitely ‘other worldly'.

It was August when the Larson’s arrived.  When Rob, in his bravado offered to escort the group through the secret passage, they assessed the situation and determined the boggy path impassable and turned back. My tenacious twelve year-old, determined to impress a certain little someone, sallied forth into the swamp. “He’s where? And you left him?” I asked with my voice rising as I scrambled into my kayak and took off for the back bay. 

Half-way there, in the middle of the lake, I see a small bobbing head swimming towards me.  And discover a very humbled Robby making his way home.  “Where’s Dad’s kayak?” I ask, not really relishing the answer.  “In the middle of the swamp”.  Robby’s fierceness drove him into the middle of the bog, but his slight stature and fatigue did not allow him to paddle out of it.  “So”, he explained to me, “I folded my clothes and left them on the kayak so you would know that I had left the boat on purpose if you came looking for me and found the empty kayak”.  Which meant he entered a bottomless murk of spongy, pungent, mucky water (that at the highest point came up to his neck) with all sorts of slimy, creepy swamp paraphernalia attaching to him as he made his way through. “You know, we have to go fetch the kayak”, I informed him, so he draped himself over my bow and we headed to the entrance of the secret passage.

And then we stopped.  I could not paddle through the floating carpet of muck to where Matthew’s kayak waited, cradled in the gurgling bosom of the bog.  That’s when my boy became a man in front of my eyes, “I’ll go get it Mom, I left it”, and dang if he didn’t re-enter the quagmire, trudge through chest deep yuck and return with kayak towed in hand.  Only if Alison could have witnessed that feat!  And that’s when he became my hero and he decided, down to his bones perhaps, that he really wasn’t that fond of Nature.