Trinity Lake - Day 8 - Morning

 

Love, Poem 8: Proof

That I did always love
I bring thee Proof
That till I loved
I never lived-enough-

-Emily Dickinson


Luckily, no foul weather through the night.

My fire - out.
My artwork - wet from the dew, but otherwise undisturbed.
My journal, pens, pastels, paints - sodden but salvageable.

I slept like a baby in the arms of a loving parent, all through the night. My head, aching slightly, but not enough to spoil the euphoria of yesterday. I make my way into the tent, find my water-bottle and drink thirstily.

I leave the art materials where they lie, so as to let the sun do its work.
I get a good breakfast fire going and boil a much needed kettle.
And retrieve from the treetop kitchen  - Day 8 Breakfast.

As tomorrow will completely be occupied with packing up and moving out, this is my last day to work. I will fill my day with art, and then in the late afternoon I will take apart my large artwork - dismantle the frame, roll the canvas, stow it in the canoe,
ready for my return trip to civilization, the landing,
and Bud.


                                                             *

In the late morning, I stand to straighten out my stiff back and shoulders. It is a gorgeous day, the rock sun-warmed, the air still. I slip on my Converse and pick my way down toward the canoe.
Perhaps a short paddle before lunch.
I paddle to 'Flint's Pointer', easily visible in the still water, green and eerie, pointing to where I've been. 

And survived.

And along to where the cedar woods drop down to the rocky shore, the spot where my stretcher poles were cut.
I circle around the bay and back along the opposite shoreline, nosing gently through a shallow rocky inlet, the water crystal clear, so warm for September.
I loop the painter round a rock, strip off and slipping into the water, float on my back and gently propel myself out of the shadows and into the sun.
To think about the last eight days.

Not having any mirror but the lake, I can only assume that I am tanned and weathered. My legs are criss-crossed with scratches, standard canoe trip legs.
My one black fingernail, with a white moon-shaped dent in it, a reminder of my first day on my own.
Coming through my narrow aisle of pain.
My hands, rough and blackened from woodfire cooking.
My hair, a greyish-white mop, a tangle held back from my face with an elastic. (God knows what that looks like.)
My old lady breasts, tanned.

I dip down underwater to the pebbled floor of the lake.
As I reach to touch the algae covered stones, disturbing the bottom, I watch the cloud of murky water rise upward.


                                                           *

August 1974

I found the cliff, for all my thinking that I wouldn't be able to. No sign post or any kind of markings anymore, but we kept to the shoreline and the opening to the bay appeared. 
My heart sank.
The tent site at the cliff is lovely, and the weather cooperated. Bud and Wren literally spent hours jumping from the cliff and floating in the warm still waters. 
I spent the time drawing them.
Not prepared to revisit my terrors of the past, I kept away from the cliff itself. 
Neither of them pushed. 

Neither of them , in fact, seemed to notice.

I was beginning to feel that I wasn't really there at all.

I started in on the wine long before either of them.
When the light starting to fade, and the three of us were in one place,

I relaxed a little as we moved into out evening ritual.
However I wasn't at my best. 
The fact that the two of them were enjoying so heartily, intimately, the one place that haunted me on Trinity Lake, I found difficult to watch.

That, and for the first time, I felt awkward.

Like I wasn't needed at all on this our last night.

As soon as darkness fell, I crawled into the tent.

As I was the first one in, I was at the far end. 

I woke some hours later, to find neither Bud nor Wren there.

Not only not there, but not around the now cold, dark firepit either.

I wanted to avoid thinking what this meant. I rolled over, pulled the sleeping-bag firmly over my head, and fell eventually into a fitful sleep.

I woke again as the world was just starting to lighten. There they were, asleep next to me, just as things had been the entire trip as the first soft grey light filtered into our tent, and the shapes of the two people I loved most in the world slowly became visible.
Not wanting to rouse, or speak, or touch, or make eye contact with either of them, I crawled over their feet.

And out.

Before either of them was up and about, I slipped into the water below the cliff.
Trying not to think,
I dipped down underwater to the pebbled floor of the lake.
As I reached to touch the algae covered stones, disturbing the bottom, I watched the cloud of murky water rise upward.