On The Air

I’ve had a few requests to post my commentary which aired at MPR yesterday, but is not archived over there. This isn’t precisely the final cut–sometimes the perfect word on paper just doesn’t work out loud. Actually, that happens a lot. Anyway, here it is:

Coming around the lake the other day, I noticed there were orange barricades piled along the sidewalk, on medians, in the grass. I guess there had been some kind of event. The wind blew pretty cold, there were walkers and joggers, cyclists in their funny stretch pants, roller skiers making their telltale snick and scratch. Winds out of the Southwest at about ten miles per hour, and there were gusts that sent yellow and brown leaves kiting along through the air.

I glanced out across Lake Harriet and I felt depressed. In a tight little herd by the boathouse, all the white metal buoys were nestled together like geese, and next to them the overturned tenders with their oars safely stowed somewhere else. A steady beating of whitecaps came against the Northeast shore, and I thought how fun it would be to head on a reach with my little sailboat, the Lucille Clifton, her mainsail pinched against the gusts. But there were no sailboats, and no canoes.

The park board wants all sailboats off the lake by October 15th. I came off the water four days late. I was reluctant then, as I am reluctant now, to say goodbye–not to the summer, because I welcome fall and winter, each season in its own time. But I grieve the death of the lake. For the next six weeks, it’ll be deserted–no swimmers, no sailors, no buoys, the fishing docks floating like lost space stations. It’ll be a month or more until the ice sets firmly enough to allow the first crackling steps of unleashed dogs, then the sticks and rocks thrown by children, then the children themselves, then finally the parents with the ice skates.

It’s hard to tell which is a busier time on the lake, mid-summer or mid-winter. Long about August first, there are days when sailboats congest the lake as if it were a parking lot full of circling hotrods. At twilight, as the boats tack back to their buoys, the muskie fisherman come out and troll the shallows, casting their monstrous lures fifty yards at a time. At the Harriet guardhouse, more fishermen sit along the shore in lawnchairs and on pickle buckets, listening to the Twins, keeping an eye on their bobbers. I always see their landing net leaning there against an ash tree. It’s big enough to haul in a healthy teenager.

As summer simmered down into fall, I couldn’t justify leaving work early enough to sail before sundown. Still, I played hooky once or twice. I brought along a flashlight, in case the wind died and I had a long paddle back to buoy number twenty-one. I’m pretty good at flaking the sails and stowing the jib and battening things down, but not good enough to do it blind.

The day I came off the water, the wind was flukey. For the last time this year, I cast off the buoy. It was a cool day, a day to remind me that not every windy day is a sailing day. One rogue wind nearly knocked me down, and my jeans were soaked in icy water. But I couldn’t bear to sail her to the landing for the last time. I stayed out, beating upwind, then running downwind, then reaching across, again and again.

The sun set behind Linden Hills and I finally tacked toward the band-shell, catching a glimpse of the tattered banners atop the buildings. It was getting dark–hard to trailer the Lucille Clifton and take down her rigging. Holding the tiller and the mainsheet in one hand, I got out the flashlight with the other, switched it on to test the batteries, and set it on the deck. A searching wind came hard, the boom came across, and I saw the flashlight tip and roll off the cowling and into the lake. I thought I saw its weak beam spiral down ten feet. And then it was gone, into the green night.