My neighbor Jim and I slipped our kayaks into the lake, our paddles dipping into the glassy water. We nudged through the fallen leaves dotting the surface, a scattering of orange and red stars. The sky, with its mid-fall overcast, reflected mother-of-pearl in the ripples around us.
We moved down stream, around the point, and through several dying pine trees. During the previous year’s drought, they sprang up on the low-lying spit of sand. With the rise of the water level, though, they stood off the land like three doomed miniature lighthouses.
Paddling across the lake, we reached the far shore and then turned upstream. A year prior, when we paddled this same spot, we had to move through a rock garden— large lumpy shoulders that rose above the surface, our plastic boats leaving little blue or red slivers of themselves on the grainy stone. Now, we floated several feet above the garden, the rocks occasionally rubbing the undersides of our kayaks.
Further upstream, we floated over other areas that I remembered, now washed out by the higher water: the sand bar that spread out like blonde hair, the two boulders that pinched the stream into a setting from The Wind in the Willows, the large outcropping that served as a sheer-faced perch.
The river chattered to itself and us as we paddled further upstream. When the water became too shallow, we left the boats stranded on boulders and waded to the far bank. Following a trail, we skirted a debris line. High water the previous month had pushed over the banks, drawing a ragged scrawl of wood and cans and the occasional basketball, some refugee from a backyard that was too close to the water.
We hopped back into the river, stopping to watch a side stream bully its way through a series of pour-overs, ending in three tiny boiling holes, one of which slowly ate at a large boulder in the way. We set out again, wading up to our chests before emerging on the other side, water sluicing from our wetsuits.
We moved from island to island, working our way over rocks, through pricker bushes, across small rivulets, finally turning back toward our boats perched in the stream.
Wedging myself into my kayak, snapping the spray skirt around the cockpit’s lip, I slipped into the water once again, my boat bobbing like an autumn leaf. The current pushed me downstream, over and past the rocks, into the deeper section.
With no fanfare, we paddled back to the take out, hauled our boats up the muddy bank, tied them to the truck’s roof.
Some of the best memories are built of small, insignificant details.
Robin Follet lives, teaches, and cartoons in North Carolina.
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