Alder Lake

Was it Alder Lake, or Balsam?
No, neither: Balsam creek, which led to Alder Lake.
Car camping. Except the parking lot was too far,
so we hiked in our cooler, our food, our tents and sleeping bags,
stopping every ten feet of the almost mile to make minor adjustments
to the weight that strained with every step,
the straps of two messenger bags
across my shoulders couldn’t be less suitable
for the task at hand. Still, we were camping:
with food enough for a battalion of hungry bureaucrats,
beer enough for two--the new york department of city planning
is hungry, and thirsty.
it’s september.
the leaves have just begun to turn.

that afternoon, i watched three of them swim
in the cooling lake, from the point
where i could still just barely touch the bottom,
out and away, nearly half way across
a straight line the shortest distance between two points,
campsite beach and trail head
(if only we could have rowed our coolers
of coleslaw and beer).
i tread water for a bit,
try to swim towards them, but ten feet and i’m winded,
so i swim back to shoulder height and stand
the sun at my back and the three swimmers
treading water at the halfway point.
i walk back to the shore,
stepping over mud and leaf rot,
onto stones, large and round,
smaller too with sharp pointy bits,
and stand shivering on the spit,
grass rock and wildflowers,
drip dry in the sun,
and then dry myself with a borrowed towel.

at camp, we work to build the night’s fire.
before we swam,
there was gathering of logs
of branches and twigs
and not one but two half trees,
one six inches across
and one ten,
both taking three men to carry through the camp site.
we were prepared for a siege,
we would take down anything in our way
with two hands and found battering rams.

they fell to the ground
and then began the hard work,
yeoman’s work, of sawing,
of chopping--we had a saw and a hatchet
and took turns with both.
worked over the standing remnants of one stump,
until  he hacked at log looked like
a pencil suspended over the ground.
took flying kicks, waiting for the satisfaction
of the crack, the thumping drop of wood on forest floor.

the bear rope was strung directly over our campsite,
between tents, from tree to tree. we stood beneath it,
wondering how to move it.
there was an attempt to scale the tree,
but ten feet up the first man dropped to the floor again,
and i gave it a go, wrapping my forearms tight around the trunk,
my legs wrapped around the trunk, the edge of my boots digging
into each side of the tree, legs up, arms up, legs up, arms up,
the bark scratching into bare forearms until i was there,
twenty feet up, feet dug in, one arm holding the tree,
and untying the knot with my other, then
holding one loose end, i let myself down,
thin lines of blood from tiny scratches
that still show nearly a week later.

we sawed logs and scaled trees and built fire from scratch
into a roaring blaze that lasted through the night and
into the morning.

that night, we were the first to bed,
half stoned and curled together on the forest floor.
“you just have to show off, dont you?”
she stated more than asked, and I smiled shyly,
because it’s true and we both know it.
“any time anything even remotely masculine is going on,
you’re right there,” she says.

and I shrug and I tell her she can’t possibly know
what it is to be a man shorter than most,
in a world where height and width is power,
and I was told at ten that I couldn’t play catcher,
because I was too small.
had she ever been lifted kicking
and placed in a garbage can?
and she wonders at the push ups
and the chin ups and the arms in the mirror,
wonders until she reluctantly concedes that maybe
it’s not such a bad thing, this desperate proof
that i’m strong enough and smart enough and ballsy enough
to climb a fucking tree and untie a rope with one hand,
and do it again on the other side of camp.

rare moments these, when other men can watch
and wonder at the speed and strength,
outside the city, on alder lake,
where boys can be boys,
and are, these last days of summer,
precious moments,
waiting,
before the fall.

charles imbelli
2010