Wood Thrush Lake

In the desert a fountain is springing

In the wide waste there is still a tree

And a bird in the solitude singing

Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

― Lord Byron

We dilly-dallied in Green’s Grocery, Katrina and I, listening to the hit “One More Time” by the teen sensation Britney Spears playing over the crackling loudspeaker. Eventually we selected our Drumstick cones, and grumpy old Mr. Green shooed us outside. We didn’t care. The song was over. We had other things on our mind.

We strolled down dusty Lake Road, tearing off the gaudy blue Drumstick wrappers, licking and nibbling the cones. The flicker and buzz of an idyllic summer day surrounded us, one of dozens of such days we spent each summer at our family cottages. A motor droned far out on the water, the lake’s famous thrushes perched in the tall Jack pines, singing reet-twit-a-tee, and all around us small creatures rustled among the undergrowth. We were deep in conversation about what, exactly, led to death in space.

“Suffocation, when you run out of oxygen,” Katrina said, licking the drips from her wrist.

I recalled a TV show and said, “Sudden decompression, when your body expands so fast it explodes,” as I wiped sticky fingers on my cut-offs. The strap of my tote bag cut into my shoulder because I was carrying four tins of canned pineapple for Mom and a 200-page notebook for Katrina and me. It contained the first draft, in two different handwritings, of the Story of Sha-Kaziel, about a spaceship on its way to a distant galaxy.

We reached Frog Pond, where we used to catch frogs, a swampy place that now seemed too childish to muck about in. I was startled by a figure standing motionless among the cattails, then recognized her. I pretended not to see Nora, someone my parents kept pushing at me like a daily vitamin. She’d impressed them two summers ago with her poise and responsible attitude. To me, she was a grinder.

“Oh hey, Nora,” Katrina called out and laughed. “You gave me a scare.”

“Just doing my daily counts,” Nora said. In her large rubber boots, she galumphed her way out of the lowland mud, looking amused by the rude sounds her feet made. The frogs fell silent, like polite people hearing farts. She carried a net and jar, and a flashlight and stopwatch hung from her belt. “Their numbers are way down from last year.” She tsked.

“Oh yeah?” I tried to sound sincere but really, I was thinking about lunch.

The smell of cigarettes hit us at the same moment. We all looked up. Our eyes darted around to discover the source.

Nora turned look at the place she’d been staring at when we’d first seen her—and then Katrina and I saw them, also, a young couple sitting far away on an outcropping.

“They come out every day,” Nora said.

“Lovers’ lane,” Katrina quipped, craning to see them better. “D’you ever see anything, y’know, interesting?” she asked slyly.

Nora raised her eyebrows and grinned. “Oh yeah.”

We waited, hungry to hear about the goings-on in what would be the next stage of our lives. The romantic sections in our shared notebook were rudimentary and needed more research.

“I’m not a Peeping Tom,” Nora said. “I hope they stub out those cigarettes, is all.”

“Like, what do you see?” I pressed, impatient with her Sunday-school delicacy. I wondered if the lovers looked anything like the scandalous pictures in the Our Bodies, Ourselves book that my mom kept in her bottom drawer.

“Nude sunbathing, sometimes,” Nora reported. “Fully dressed kissing, sometimes. That’s all. But I keep tabs on them. The last thing we want is another grad fire.” Last year the local high school grads had built a campfire—and not properly doused it. The grad fire had burnt up dozens of acres before the Volunteer Fire Department got it under control. My dad was buddies with some guys in the VFD, but his asthma meant he shouldn’t go out on the frontlines with them. Ever.

“Could you guys help keep an eye on things?” Nora said. “These small cook-outs are a huge threat. People think they’ve put the fire out… but the conditions are so dry the fire keeps going in the soil.”

Katrina and I exchanged an embarrassed glance. I wondered if Nora had (literally) caught wind of us trying our first smoke last week. We’d chosen to fast-track ourselves to adulthood with a couple of cigarettes I’d snitched from Uncle Brad’s pack. We had canoed to a tiny spot we called Cranberry Island in Wood Thrush Lake. On the side facing away from our family cottages, we’d lit up one cigarette, puffed, argued about how to puff, and made ourselves a little sick and a lot guilty by the end.

“Yeah, sure,” Katrina said lightheartedly. Butter wouldn’t melt.

“And that’s not all,” Nora said. “Near the promontory yesterday, I saw Hogarth and the other kids looking for dry brush for kindling. I told them it was way too dry for any kind of campfire—and they laughed in my face.”

“It’s not too dry, is it?” I griped. “There’s mud here.…” I pointed toward the cattails.

“But a smaller amount of mud than usual,” Nora said. “Do you remember how noisy Frog Pond used to be at this time of year?”

I gnawed my lip. I hadn’t really been paying attention.

“I just hope they douse their butts, like, completely.” Nora spoke with unusual vehemence, and I felt uncomfortable for her. She had to learn to dial it back. Older kids like Hogarth get their backs up if you come down too hard.

I remembered last summer, when my parents had visited Nora’s parents and we’d played together all evening. Jenga, Trouble, backgammon. It was fun until near the end when she told me about a TV documentary she’d watched, with animals panicking in the midst of a forest fire. She wept, and I twisted my hands, uncomfortable with her intensity.

Today at Frog Pond, Nora abruptly stopped. “I better stop before you think I’m a real pain.”

“Nah, that’s okay,” Katrina said. “We love this big ole forest.” Her head swivelled slowly around. I suspect she meant it ironically, but as I swivelled my head, too, an unusual spirit rose within me: a buoyancy as I gazed up into the tall green tent of trees.

Nora left and, when she was well out of earshot, Kat and I made ourselves sick with laughter, trying different permutations:

“I hope you douse your butts, like, completely.”

“Boys, I hope you completely douse your butts.”

* * *

It was the start of the new millennium, and we didn’t have a clue about global warming. Maybe some scientists did, but not average cottagers like us. Our parents kept saying “hotter than average,” like things would go back the way they were. We had other, fun things to think about: swimming, Britney Spears, the Story of Sha-kaziel, and what the boys in our new middle school were like.

The summer stretched before us like a hammock we could climb into and take our sweet time getting out of. I loved the long, slow mornings when Katrina and I would meet up on Lake Road, stroll to Green’s for a treat, and hash out plotlines for our Story of Sha-Kaziel. We had a hideaway, a certain grove of black maples in the forest where we’d stuffed an old tarp in the groove of a boulder. It gave us shade at noon and shelter from the occasional shower.

One day Katrina would write the Story of Sha-kaziel and the next day I would take over. When I received the notebook, I was often perplexed by the plot machinations of her freshly written chapter. A royal sceptre was stolen, or a lieutenant was kidnapped or the princess’s falcon was murdered. I invented backstory for what had just happened. She teased me about “psychologizing” everything.

“Things don’t just happen,” I insisted. “They happen because people want them to.”

Kat’s parents were both engineers, no-nonsense types who, I soon found out, were preparing to move the family to Australia in September. When she broke the news to me, partway through summer vacation, she began to cry. “Our last summer together.”

“Australia!” I shrieked. Then I cried, too. We were a sobbing heap on the floor of our forest hideaway, weeping to exhaustion, lying there until the needles left cross-hatched imprints on our faces.

After that, the big move was never mentioned directly. The notebook story became fixated on a single story line: The spaceship was heading toward a new planet where half the crew was to be abandoned, and the other half would fly home.

Her family’s imminent departure hovered over us like a cloud that, as September drew nearer, descended to become more like smog. It settled upon us, choked us, and poisoned our friendship. Small disagreements accumulated to become ugly cloudbursts of misunderstanding. We continued to trade the notebook back and forth, but the balance shifted. I made gory things happen to her characters, apparently without reason, and she delved more deeply into the characters’ psyches, giving neuroses right and left to the characters to justify their bad behavior.

The end of summer at Wood Thrush Lake was marked by Labor Day festivities in the old barn of the original homestead of the Green family. Everyone called it a barn dance but first there was a seven o’clock talent show, where each family had to put on a skit or perform a song together. One family juggled. My parents planned to humiliate us with Hank Williams’ tune, “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” which they sang with maximum twang. It had no redeeming social value, but Dad knew the guitar chords. “Why can’t you choose ‘Blowing in the Wind,’” I pleaded, “or Bob Marley’s ‘One Love’?” Of course, the Britney Spears hit was out of the question.

At first Katrina refused to tell me what song her family planned to sing because she was so mortified. Spying on musical choices was dead simple out in cottage land. I overheard them practicing Waltzing Matilda, I guess in honor of their big move Down Under.

I asked Kat to confirm.

“Daddy’s gonna make asses of us all,” she moaned.

Suddenly we were dearest friends again, united in generational disgust at our parents’ hokey musical tastes. We sneaked back to Cranberry Island and shared another cigarette, taking care to drown the smoldering butt in a cup of water.

“I’m going to conveniently disappear at seven,” I confided. In my family, forgiveness was easier to get than permission. “I could argue till I was blue in the face,” I said, “and then those idiots would change it to an even dorkier song. So I’m just not gonna show.”

“Me too!” she squealed, pounding the hillock we sat upon.

Katrina and I whiled away those last few days together, lazing about under the green-dappled shade of maples and towering Jack pines, imagining a future together without families tearing us apart.

* * *

September loomed, bigger than ever before because I would lose my best friend, my collaborator, my co-conspirator. Katrina and I spent the hours before the barn dance experimenting with our moms’ cosmetics, our hearts heavy with our impending farewell. We’d get the make-up just right when a chance remark would cause tears, ruining the mascara. I was a red-eyed emotional wreck by dinnertime, when we returned to our separate cottages.

“Eat, eat,” Dad said. “I made your favorite.”

“Your growling tummy will drown out the singing,” Mom said. I chewed my sausage in silence, choking with resentment. I was nervous, too, about sneaking out and at last minute, they sensed I was “iffy,” and they looped their arms through mine. I couldn’t make a scene; I just played along, and we performed a respectable rendition of “One Love.”

When Nora’s family appeared, a murmur filled the room. She’d been self-appointed junior fire warden all over Wood Thrush Lake. Some folks supported her; some folks did not. Nora went to center-stage and adjusted the mic stand. She was dressed in tie-dye and beaded skirt, unlike the “junior biologist” look of lightweight cargo pants and button-up shirt she normally sported. Her mother sat at the keyboard and her father took up the guitar beside her brother on bass. They sang “Joy to the World”—the Three Dog Night version—and it dawned on me: Of course she would want to sing about Jeremiah the bullfrog!

She could hold a tune; I’ll give her that much.

At first intermission I made my way to the lemonade area, distractedly weaving my way through the rugrats, who were scurrying about, shrieking with excitement at staying up past bedtime. A cooler sat with beers floating among ice and I dunked my hand in, grabbed a Coors and went to find Katrina. She’d skipped “Waltzing Matilda,” all right, but I figured she must be close by.

The night was warm; rain hadn’t fallen for two weeks, and the chatter among cottage folk was all about pumping lake water to rescue beloved cottage gardens. I kept looking for Katrina, already imagining our conversation where we’d dissect the evening’s event, including Nora’s bold fashion choice.

When we stepped out at second intermission, before the dance, everyone suddenly became alert to the smell of smoke. A panic seized us, an urge to discover the source of the smoke.

Behind Green’s barn an outcropping of rock held a water tank, so several of us scrambled up there and some even climbed a tree that was growing beside the tank—the lookout. We saw the promontory where clouds of gray smoke angrily billowed straight up into the deepening twilight. I must find Katrina, I thought, and warn her the fire was near our families’ cottages. Eyes stinging, I stared up into the Jack pines, my tote bag over my shoulder that held her mom’s make-up bag, and a beer for us to share. I must find Katrina.

I watched shouting people moved toward cars and trucks all around me. The VFD captain was hollering for some firefighters to drive there directly, to the worst part of the wildfire, and for others to go pick up the portable pump. They surged into action.

We others, non-firefighters, moved as if through heavy sludge, disbelief and uncertainty dogging every step. All along we had known it was a hot dry summer; now we would be visited by a wrathful Gaia. I felt sorry for my asthmatic dad, who attracted dirty looks for not joining the other men.

“We’ll dig a trench,” my parents yelled, “Get in the car! Right now!”

We sped along the dirt road to the promontory. I crouched in the back of the car, trembling and nauseated. We dug a trench and fought the fire with a bucket brigade for an hour until we had to flee.

I was still a kid without a concept of environmental collapse. Nora, the only kid I knew who could have explained the concept to me, was fighting to save her beloved Frog Pond. It turned out that the fire had started at the promontory where she had first chastised Hogarth and other kids for not fully dowsing their campfires. Among the old Jack pines, the fire became an uncontrollable inferno.

The conflagration spread to the five cottages on the promontory. As I suspected, and unbeknownst to everyone else, Katrina had gone home to wait out the embarrassing concert. Possibly she was the first to notice the fire. She’d collapsed near the woodpile of her family’s cottage, which burned completely. Before daybreak her body would be burnt beyond recognition, a bucket in her hand.

At the promontory’s narrowest point, the VFD plowed a firebreak, and they fought ceaselessly, not to save five cottages, but to stop the fire from devouring the other thirty cottages—and the forest around.

In the morning the rain began. Five blackened stone chimneys were all that remained.

* * *

Nora and I and several others returned this September on the silver anniversary of the Wood Thrush Lake fire. We laid a wreath for Katrina among the woodpile char. Three other fatalities occurred and were honoured, too.

We stood listening for the wood thrush, or “a bird in the solitude singing” and someone read Byron’s verse aloud.

Atop the scarred promontory a spindly new Jack pine grows.

THE END