Our Little Lake
Our boat is an 18 ft pontoon boat, which is used solely on our sizeable 27 acre lake. It is the quickest boat on the lake, with its two eighteen year old electric trolling motors. The boat itself has seen better days, with a grey weathered carpet, dented aluminum sides, and sun cracked leather seats that were once grey, now sun-bleached to a dirty white. The boat is tied to our skinny wooden dock. The dock has freshly stained wood, and a salvaged ladder hanging off the end of it so you can spend those hot summer days swimming and taking in the sun with ease. For those that would bore of just sitting at the dock and occasionally get in the water, the boat offers a world of opportunities. Getting on the boat creates a large shockwave on the water, reflecting the sun onto the wall of overhanging trees, making everything look as though it is swaying. Untying the boat from its moorings is a careful process, as the weathered and frayed rope may prick you or give you splinters. Those are a pain. Flicking the motors into reverse sends the boat into a vibration fit and it creates a choppy noise to go with it. After bouncing out of the dock, you get hit with the smell, a sharp smell of fresh air with the pungent undertones of fish. Many find this smell to be off-putting or gross, but to me its the smell of summertime and my childhood.
Switching from reverse to forward causes the front of the boat to jump up out of the water and begin hurtling along the surface of the lake at the blistering speed of 5mph. Taking in the scenery, you can see that the lake has an odd shape to it. Our dock is in a large open end, with two different paths, one going about half a mile down a narrowing canal-like strait, and the other goes into another small open area with two houses and a small park, consisting of a picnic table a swing and a chrome slide that becomes a blinding beacon at the right time of day. The narrow strait is littered with houses, each with their own dock. The docks vary from docks like ours, a straight narrow bit of planks that juts into the water, to elaborate docks consisting of outhouses, decks with enough space to have small parties, and mechanisms to lift the boat out of the water at the flick of a switch.
About halfway down the narrow strait, there is the stump of long dead tree jutting from the water like a grey-white obelisk. The stump used be a large tree with many of its dead branches reaching over the water like a skeletal monster. Among the limbs was a rough rope with knots tied periodically down its length. This rope was the source of entertainment for the last few summers of my life. We spent hours launching ourselves out into the lake, just to splash down into the murky cool water, sometimes even sinking so deep that we would touch the muddy, stick infested bottom. That was until last year a team of landscapers lopped off the top of our tree with a chainsaw. Now all that is left is the stump, rising 8 feet out of the water, with the ladder that we used to use to get the rope, now cut in half. The top of the stump is uneven and splintery. We made the best out of the cut down tree and now spend many hours jumping and doing tricks, such as flips, off the stump, but some things just aren't the same.
The end of the lake opens up to another small opening, with a small creek where the lake gets its water. This part of the lake is always filled with the sour smell of stagnant water and is normally avoided to spare everyone’s noses. The peculiar shape of our lake causes a humorous phenomena when you view the lake from above. If you look at the lake from the right angle, it looks like a shark. The large open end where my dock is becomes the head, the smaller upper path becomes the dorsal fin, the long narrowing canal becomes the body and the stagnant end becomes a fin-shaped tail.
Docking the boat is an exact science, too far from the dock and you have to back up so you can tie it up, too close and you scrape the side of the boat or hit the dock. When it lines up, the boat majestically glides past the dock until the shore brings the ride to a sudden stop. Tying it up is another careful encounter with the frayed rope. There the boat shall remain, ready to undertake another adventure on our little lake