River Yarns: The Watermelon Theft

Persons attempting to find a moral in this narrative will be shot.

This is the first piece in a series that I’m calling River Yarns, which is about summer life on the river. I intend to run these pieces, occasionally, throughout the season. They’re going to be paywalled because, well, because I have to pay for diapers and books and beer.

During the summer months, we live on a river in the middle-of-the-woods. Or, it’s not quite the middle-of-the-woods. There’s a town nearby and a small neighborhood of other river people and everybody except for us lives here year-round. I grew up on this river. I learned to swim here. I can tell you where the rockfish are thick and where the beaver dams are hidden along the shore and where the bald eagles’ nests are in the trees. And growing up here turns you into a certain sort of person. I don’t know what does it but I suspect it’s probably something about seeing a few-thousand sunrises and sunsets come along and shimmer over the river. My neighbor Larry says it boils something into your DNA. Mark Twain, our most famous chronicler, once wrote this sketch of a sunrise on the river where he grew up —

“First, there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep hush broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunting sense of loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the worry and bustle of the world.  The dawn creeps in stealthily; the solid walls of black forest soften to gray, and vast stretches of the river open up and reveal themselves; the water is glass-smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white mist, there is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquillity is profound and infinitely satisfying. Then a bird pipes up, another follows, and soon the pipings develop into a jubilant riot of music. You see none of the birds; you simply move through an atmosphere of song which seems to sing itself.”

Yeah, seeing that a few thousand times will do something to you.