snorkeling

Snorkeling

In my childhood the short excursions to our cottage in Maine were the highlight of my summers. Our cottage was less than fifty feet from the shore of our little one by one half mile lake. The absence of a scheduled day brought a youthful bliss into every thing I did. My passion was snorkeling which I tried to do every day. Being as it was in Maine I had the entire day to explore I went all around the lake, yet I preferred to stay in our little cove, searching for bottles or other odds and ends that accumulated in the inch layer of bottom muck.

Often the expeditions would launch from our raft, where you could sit (on the bench that covered one side) and suit up, then plunge headlong or with one leg out, traditional diving entry. There are different types of maneuvers that you can perform: the dolphin kick; entry procedures that I practiced off the dock; deep and shallow dives; equalizing the pressure in my ears. Now that the expedition had begun I would first tour the bottom, perhaps venture to the great rock formations at the only neighbor’s house within 1/8 mile, by the twisty dirt road used to gain entrance to my hidden hunting grounds. Some days I would go to Mulendike’s perhaps even to Renee and Arthur’s, but not often. Sometimes to a hidden place where you could hunt muscle all day, for days on end, always to be returned. Sometimes at the sights I saw I would exclaim awe, feeling foolish I would hesitate and slowly proceed.

The many times I left home base (the dock) and between the beach checkpoint one (I would go between these two many, many times in the course of my expedition), perhaps to stop to catch crayfish, frogs, small fish, or run away screaming form the sight of a leech, I began to know certain fish and call them by name. Always the Bass, once we saw brook trout, there always seemed to be an endless supply of Sunfish, many types of Perch about, and there always seemed to be a Pickerel in the shadows, motionless, but the Catfish that came year after year always leaving a swarm of babies were my favorite, so cute and harmless.

The catfish that would come to mate each year in our little cove soon became both a passion and thus a study. They arrived in the early to mid-summer to build their nests, which they dug in the ground by one of two methods: to start they would suck some of the base debris into their mouth and then spit it out; after they had a significant enough hole burrowed they would stick their heads into the hole and move their tails from side to side creating enough of a force to suck the loosened debris out.

They would soon have the babies, the parents were very protective of the babies but they would not bother me if I did not get too close. If I did however get into a dangerously close position they would charge me and I would move fast for the parents were at least a foot long and their whiskers were three to four inches. I did not like to get too close that much for if I did they would either move or not come back.

When the babies were big enough the parents would bring them into the rock piles I made for them in the shallow water. I would not snorkel as much when the babies were in the rocks because it was so much fun just to catch them. Sometimes I would keep them for awhile and let them go or I would bring them home with me to put in my fish tank.

I went to see them every day (sometimes there were more than one pair) and there is a feeling you get staring into the eyes of a pair of catfish protecting their nest with newborn babies, you feel so at ease, like you truly are a part of creation the chills go up and down your spine as if touched by God. I have experienced many feelings and have had many such sensations but this it is unlike any other I know.

At night when the trips were over I would explain the facts to my mother, not the feelings or thoughts, those were mine and they stayed and today reflection haunts my head because I cannot recreate the total peacefulness of those days. In those days there was no mission of peace attached to my dreary existence yet sometimes I would try to communicate only to be driven off or swam away from.

In these long talks with myself on the meaning of destiny and ability I have come to somewhat of a conclusion. The past is present only in memory and tomorrow is forever reborn (in dreamy calculations.) Like flies we swarm around garbage, feeding on insecurity and premonition, passion grows. The roots dig deep and do much to build a healthy stalk. How can one live thus! Perhaps in mind only but true, I will always be a poet and a dreamer. If destiny places a certain situation I must avoid the possibility, reason and dismiss the unknown. These are the things which have, in former periods, thrust the most hurt and proved utterly useless. Falsely held gain can not encompass an entire life (this though is hypothesis and as in scientific practices idea is most commonly not reality, for nature’s ways are indescribable at least.)

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