Everything is Alright

A beauty in the woods.

I could have written from the woods of North Carolina, hidden from the temptation of cellular towers, in a cabin that could fit a family. We played house. We played Scrabble. We tried to play cribbage, but cribbage is a game best played by those who already know.

The water smelled the way the streets of Roturua, New Zealand smelled, a sort of hard boiled egg left out for a couple of days kind of smell. Sulfur, I think. We wondered if this water might actually possess minerals that we need.

In the country you consider the city, much the way in the city you consider what a weekend in the country might be. 

Along Yellow Creek Road there are signs at the edge of the pavement that tell the people of the city not to spray or mow, and on these sides you will see bright yellow flowers intermixed with purple, long strips of goldenrod, and you will see a barn that has not been used for a long time, the vertical boards weathered and split, a gray that tells their age. 

And you will drive without a destination, and you will find a beach that is not really a beach but more a carved out space of sand where a rope has been tied to form a rectangular and signs have been set up to warn that there is no lifeguard. 

You notice that you are the only man amongst the thirty or forty people, so you sit back beneath the shade of a tree, the trunk a backrest for you, your waist a back rest for your girlfriend.

She says she heard a comedian once, how he described the difference of strangers approaching, how it is not the same for men as for women, how a woman can walk up to a group of women, approach one holding a baby and there is no sign of concern.

She could even say, “That baby is so cute. I just want to smell her. I love the smell of new babies.”

Now imagine a man trying to do the same thing. They would lock him up.

Beyond the marked off swimming spot, the skyline stretches with pine trees and rocks break the surface of the water like the back end of a hippopotamus.

You suggest a ride along the trail. On the left of the lake there is no trail. On the right there are too many roots and rocks and fallen limbs to suit the skinny tired bicycles you have brought. So you walk.

The two of you hold hands beneath the canopy and pass through the dappled lights. You see spots where new trees, saplings, have sprouted, and you know these exist within the spaces of light. A rope swing hangs from a tree between a collection of those hippopotamus rocks and you can see clear through the surface to logs and fish swimming.

The two of you watch the fish swim. It is as if you are hidden, privy to a party to which you were not invited. You know that years ago you would have needed to take the end of the rope, gather this in your hands and swing. Your reason would not solely be the excitement of flying high and dropping with a splash.

You do not swing. Neither does she.

The next day you walk to the same spot, to the place where you did swim a bit, but she didn’t. Today she is ready. Today she wants to swim.

The two of you wade into the water. Knee deep. Waist deep. You hold each other, know that when the clouds clear the shiver will stop, know that sharing shivers is better than shivering alone.

She wants to swim to the biggest of the hippopotamus rocks. She wants to follow you. So you let her.

The rock is warm. Big. 

You can see that the water is dark. You know that this is where the water is deeper. You jump.

She wants to jump.

She says she is afraid.

“People don’t drown because they can’t swim,” she says. “People drown because they freak out.”

You check the water for her. You tell her to breathe. She bends at the knee. Her limbs relax.

“I can get you there if you can’t swim,” you say.

She jumps.

Feet, legs, waist, chest, head, underwater.

She pops up and swims toward the rock. Her face glistens. Black hair against her forehead. The sunlight shines in her eyes.

She swims to the rock.

Everything is alright.