We pick up Henry’s buddy around nine in the morning and head towards the spot. He’s been on a fishing jag lately and was asking me to take him and some of his boys, so I said sure. Why not, I figured. Hook kids on fishing and all that.
We arrive at Colyer Lake and it’s cloudy still, but there are people here. It’s Sunday on Memorial Day weekend. It doesn’t take much imagination to know that in due time, unless a tornado rips through here, the kayakers and the paddle boarders and the Subaru Storytellers will be here to crash nature’s fragile skull in with their inner-peace batons. I take out the nightcrawlers and the bug spray and my backpack with my almonds, my bananas and my Diet Coke. Two young guys like this together, they change upon amalgamation. One-on-one with a fellow of this age is a low-key conversation maybe/ or respectable silence if nothing weird has gone down: no mansplaining or chastising or demanding respect or whatever sideshow shitshow you might experience unexpectedly in that situation. But when they join forces and pair up, biology kicks in and older people like me are automatically reduced to a status that is not quite dead but also barely alive.
The testosterone blows through their system with the force of desert wind. It has them giggling and snarfing at one another in the midst of their own secret language. A bump on the shoulder is an essay on trust. A long drawn out, “Brooooooo!” is a shared reaction to something moving or unique or interesting. They curse as if I’m not around. Well, at least my kid does. I don’t hear the other boy doing it. I wipe the thought from my mind as soon as it climbs up into the front seat with me. They are young boys out in the fresh air in America. It’s Memorial Day, for chrissakes, I tell myself. Young men got their intestines blown out into their own cupped hands by mortars in the rice paddies and jungles not so long ago, ostensibly so these next generations could do all this. So they could fuck around with their friends just before summer. So they could move freely under a threatening sun, like wild deer. Like unseen wolves out there in the world.
Neither of these kids knows shit about the war. Neither of them will probably ever serve but then again who the hell knows. I’d rather they not anyways. I’d rather they throw themselves into some dumbass occupation and fight the low-grade depression and struggle to find themselves in the utter darkness of a modern relationship with another human being. I wish for them only what I’ve ever wished for myself. I hope you never get hit by a car. I hope you don’t do hard drugs. I hope you manage to discover the thing or two that helps you carry on waking up in the morning. And I hope you never ever have to bury a child.
What else is there? I don’t know. I’m sure I missed some big ones. I always do. I always miss vital things. Key components to lasting happiness are not exactly my field of expertise. These guys are laughing their asses off, going pink in the face, talking in TikTok tongues and not even clocking me at all except to take my bug spray/ push the button so a deep mist blows out into the atmosphere/ and hand it back to me as if I was a robot or a hook to hang it on.
It’s okay though. I choose, consciously, to revel in the abandonment. It’s mother nature, after all. It’s the entire system of mountains and oceans, all wrapped up in skin. People are so fucking weird. But it isn’t really their fault.
They have brain damage from hurt and pain.
They cling to the primal urge of hooking up over anything else.
Power is god.
Your dad (and your buddy’s dad) are not.
Cut loose from my gang, the boys leave me at the far end of the dam alone. They work their way back towards the parking lot and the trails that circumvent the lake while I sit on a large rock and watch the world. The sky is bluing now and the distant mountains rise up almost entirely undisturbed. They are deep emerald, dark pockets of pine. Far off, they appear painted upon the wall of sky/ graffiti down the ribs of a long haul train. I stare at them, mouth half open, and wonder about the allowances for recognizing beauty in this life.
Is there a limit to how much we actually get to take in?
Is it possible to be in the presence of something so majestic that your machine is basically flipped, your processor jammed? How much have I missed compared to all that I’ve noticed? So much more has escaped me, I know. It isn’t hard to pass by blind. A blink of your eye. A glance at your phone. Everything moves when the reels are spinning and the reels have been spinning since we first saw the light.
A couple kids down the dam are chucking big spinnerbaits over and over into the same patch of water. They have good gear, I can tell from where I am, but they aren’t catching anything at all. I think they’re brothers, one around 12 or 13, about Henry’s age, the other about 10/ like my Charlie. The older kid is casting a bait-casting reel smoothly, his lures arcing out over the shimmering pan of oil this lake has become. They splash down a long distance from the kid on the rocks and he reels them in with little flourishes of speed/ and stubby quick jerks for tiny baitfish effect.
I am spacing out, staring at the water when I happen to look up and a bald eagle is flying directly over my head at maybe 20 yards tops. It is silent, diligent, bold and pure. I hear nothing but it’s wings are heavy. It’s movements few and far between. As I take it all in and try to process what is happening, I notice that the two brothers down the dam are both looking down into a tackle box at something.
They missed the eagle entirely.
I grow frustrated for a minute there. I wanted them to see it. I wanted them to point up at it and acknowledge that we were both witnessing something special. And unexpectedly, to say the least. But they don’t see the giant bird at all.
Instead they rattle around in the kid’s tackle looking for that ‘elusive magic something’.
As the ‘elusive magic something’ aims itself into the forest at our backs.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
