12:29am: No Showers, No Laundry
It's been raining two days straight here in Manhattan, and more water than we've seen here in the city in some time. Meanwhile, Maine's as dry as Carrie Nation's liquor cabinet, narry a drop since before Prohibition, to read the papers, and sets me to thinking of J.U.M.P. I grew up in Maine, and still vacation there when I can. Late August is the best time, the days are hot but mosquito season's over, the nights are quite cool, and my good friend David has a camp on Crescent Lake up in Raymond, and he is most generous about lending it to me when it's available, as it was last August.
There were four of us this year, our first annual J.U.M.P. festival (Just Us Men Please), nothing more than an overblown excuse for the four of us (Duncan, Rand, Ian and me--Mello couldn't make it Down East from San Jose this time) to get out to the wilderness with our fishin' rods and frisbee-golf discs. Every morning Ian and I would be up by 7 for a strong cup of Joe before manning the little outboard for a morning of fishing. We brought fly rods and spin-casters, changing as often as the wind, and motored to one side of the lake and then another, looking for the quiet pools where the hatch was landing and the bass and trout rising. We didn't catch much, and always released what we did catch, having neither the desire nor the inclination to disturb the delicate balance of nature any more than our being there had already accomplished. The pleasure is not in the catching but in the fishing, the quality time spent with good friends. Hell, just drifting along in the boat, tying a new fly onto my leader and shooting the breeze with Ian was worth the price of admission (which thanks to my good friend David was nill).
By the time Ian and I drifted back into camp it was 11:30 or noon and Duncan and Rand were up and about. Usually Dunc was out jogging on the dirt paths surrounding the lake, and we'd all meet back around noon for a shot and a beer, and the first of what was usually no less than 2 rounds of frisbee golf on the course Rand and I laid out our first afternoon there. We started out in front of the camp, the tall maple across the road was the first hole, a par 2 but makable in one. From there the next two holes were straight down the path, a telephone pole half-way down on the left, the large Oak at the very end of the path. Turn right from there and up the hill: a tree, a pole, a rock. What was it Thomas Wolfe wrote in the epigram to Look Homeward, Angel: "...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces...O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again."
Well, I don't think he ever played a round in his life, but he could write better than anyone ever played frisbee-golf, so we won't judge him too harshly on that account. Anyway, the four of us would play a round; Duncan might drop out after the first nine, opting for the beach and the sun with a good book, a Walkman, and that odd little pipe of his. Rand and Ian and I would play until darkness gathered up our vision and sent us back to camp, unable any longer to sight our targets. At night we would shower and shave, and then barbeque some dinner or drive to Naples for fresh lobster and corn on the cob. Afterward, Jack and Cokes back at the camp, playing guitar and chess out on the porch, just kicking back and shooting the breeze. At some point one of us would carry a spin-caster out to one of the docks and that was the best time to catch a large-mouth bass, right off the docks after sundown.
Well, it was a small step for a man, a great J.U.M.P. for four friends. That was the last week of August; we all returned home on September 1st, Labor Day Weekend, and 10 days later the towers collapsed and the shine came off the apple. A stone, a leaf, a door...
I look forward to the second annual JUMPfest come late August, but only if they get some rain up there, to fill the wells and reservoirs, and jumpstart the showers and laundromats. Don't get me wrong, it's not that we need to take showers and wash our clothes when we're out for a week of camping and fishing, but after a vigorous round of frisbee-golf everyone else will want us to.
Posted by cronish at March 27, 2002 02:05 AM