There is a big wooden building that sits near a small stretch of sandy beach, across the street from the ferry dock, down by the water. It has two huge, sliding doors and, except for its bright yellow paint, it might almost be mistaken for an old barn. It’s where fishermen used to pack their catch in barrels, and where they’d hang fishing nets up to dry and repair. Now it’s where an outfitter stores their sea kayaks when they are not out on trips on the Great Lakes. And it’s also where you, when you’re a guide, first meet the clients who pay for big-water adventures. “The Barn,” as the guides call it, is a chaotic place to be at 8:00 on a summer morning.
Inside, the Barn is divided into two sections—one area with racks and shelves and workbenches for boat storage and repair, and the other for checking in customers and displaying retail goods like paddling jackets, hats, sunscreen, synthetic underwear, water bottles and logo t-shirts. On a busy morning, you and eight other guides will be scurrying back and forth between the two areas, gathering and checking kayaks, spare paddles, paddle floats, bilge pumps, spray skirts, first aid kits, VHF radios, tow belts, survival kits and shore lunches, while at the same time glancing at dot matrix printouts containing boat lists and trip rosters, awaiting impatiently, often anxiously, the arrival of the customers.
“Hello,” you call to the bewildered-looking couple with matching white shorts standing tentatively in the doorway. “You folks here for a trip?”
“Do we pay you for the parking?” the woman asks from behind her twelve-dollar gas station sunglasses.
“The lot outside is owned by the ferry line,” you answer for the third time this morning. “You pay at the little blue booth across the street.”
Michael, a guide from Milwaukee, emerges from behind a partition that encloses a small office in the back of the building.
“What’s the weather supposed to do today?”
“Northwest winds, ten to twenty. Waves two to four. What trip are you doing?”
Michael laughs. “Sea Caves,” he says. That’s the most popular trip, but with ten novice paddlers and a little too much wind, it can turn hairy, fast.
“Oh, man,” you say.
“Yeah.” Michael raises an eyebrow at you, rolls the top of a dry bag and buckles it shut, then steps through the doorway into the room where the boats are kept.
You reach under the wooden counter and pull out a white, legal-sized form with lots of small print. “Acknowledgement of Risk,” it says on top, with a bunch of little spaces for signatures. You write, “Guide:” and then your name in the upper right-hand corner of the sheet, and slide it to the other side of the counter. It’s 8:38, but none of the people on your roster have shown up yet. You look over your equipment list for the fourth time and try to remember what it is you’ve forgotten. You start to wonder if this part ever gets any easier.
“Morning, Sarge! How are ya?” It’s Kevin, a smiley, ultra-suave grade-school teacher from Minneapolis. He’s got the summer off and is up here to be a guide, work on his tan, and to seek refuge from the female “friends” he’s made in the Twin Cities. He calls you Sarge because of the drill-sergeant tone your voice takes when you’re yelling instructions over the white noise of the surf. You call him Captain Charisma—it seems to fit him well.
“Hey, Cap’n! I’m doing all right. You?”
“Fan-tabulous. Had a hot date with this blonde from my Poplar Island trip yesterday. Ate some pasta, drank some red wine . . . .” He looks at the ceiling and smiles, remembering. “Yeah, nice. Hey, what trip are you doing?”
“Paynes Creek this morning. Then a Safety Course in the afternoon.”
“All right. Have a good time!” Kevin ducks in back, probably to check one of his six e-mail accounts. He is a popular guy.
By 9:00 a.m. all of your clients have arrived, signed the form, and are climbing awkwardly into their rented wetsuits and PFDs. You breathe easily, watching them. Soon, you’ll all be on the water, gear stowed, and you’ll be teaching paddle strokes and wet exits. Yes, you’ll soon be on the water, and then it’ll all be okay.
You arrived in Lakeview just over a month ago, in late May, leaving all of your friends from home behind, driving up here with a car full of outdoor clothes and paddling paraphernalia, a roof rack on top with saddles to hold a kayak (just in case you ever bought your own), following a dream, an idea you had written down in your journal so many times you got sick of reading about it and finally had to try it out for yourself. It was tough, going off alone. Matt, your best friend, the guy you relied on for support and advice and lots of good laughs, was moving to Des Moines with his wife. He had wanted you to take the job; he knew you were ready. “I’ve always thought of you as a guide anyway,” Matt had said. “I mean, you taught me everything I know about kayaking.” And that was true, but you definitely still owed him for all the late-night philosophy sessions and reassuring phone conversations, not to mention the mile-wide grin he often wore that made all your monumental worries seem silly. Staying at home just wouldn’t be the same without Matt. The hardest, though, was Amy. Yes, Amy: the rugged, smart, spirited, beautiful young woman you were starting to think might be the one. She was going to Nepal for the summer. It had only been April when she had told you, in the warm security of the darkness, that you make her heart smile. But she left in mid-May. “Write me,” you had said. “I don’t think Katmandu is renowned for its reliable postal service,” she said, “but I’ll try.” Better to be in Lakeview, you thought, than back at home without her.
The room in the cabin where you are staying is small and cramped. There’s a bed and a little nightstand, a chair and a cheap armoire with six drawers and a place to hang a few shirts. All that furniture leaves just about enough floor space to step inside the room, turn around once, and walk out. You sit down slowly on the edge of the dusty mattress. There’s a weathered picture on the wall, probably left by the room’s previous inhabitant. It’s a painted portrait of an Apache Indian. His face is brown, wrinkled and leathery, but not old, his expression resolute. His eyes are deep and sad, but there’s a light there, the light of hard-earned wisdom. You pull the little picture of Amy out of your duffel bag and set it gently on the nightstand. You remember the cold winter day that it was taken: the pure white snow, the bright sun, the crystal-blue sky. You look closely at the photograph, seeing that perfect smile and those eyes that are always somehow distant. The Apache stares down at you from the wall and you stare back, your brow furrowing just a little bit, just a little like his.
Early on, to ease the homesickness, you go paddling: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herb. If there is such a thing as a born handyman, Herb is it. His uncanny ability to fix anything—from a squeaky screen door to a manual transmission—got him his job at the Barn. When you walk down the street with Herb, the two of you look a little strange. You’re still this side of thirty, and can’t dress yourself without having the right logos on your person. Herb is a forty-year-old grandfather, ex-factory worker, ex-alcoholic, a tattoo- and body-piercing aficionado with long, braided, raven-colored hair and a stained straw cowboy hat, complete with an eagle feather in the band. Except for his mustache, he looks more like one of the area’s native Ojibway people than a motorcycle guru from Green County, Wisconsin. But a guru he is. Herb built his own Aleutian baidarka—before he’d ever been in a kayak. It’s a beautiful creation: a wood frame lashed together, a canvas skin cover stretched and sewn over the frame. There’s not a single nail in the whole thing. He even waited until he got to Lakeview before he finished the coaming around the cockpit—he wanted to see how a sprayskirt would fit—and then he fashioned a perfect oval from willow branches gathered just outside of the Barn and lashed them on. It’s custom-made to fit him; your legs are too long to even squeeze under the deck. So, you paddle with Herb because you like to watch his work of art slicing through the waves, and because even though he doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Comparative Religion, when he talks, he sometimes reminds you of Matt.
“It’s all about Zen, dude,” Herb says as a wave breaks over his bow. “What, kayaking?” you say. “Kayaking, guiding, working on boats. Everything, dude.” Herb peels out in a low brace turn, not because you’re changing direction, but just because. You see him grin. “It’s about mellowing out, dude. Letting things happen.” “I guess I need to work on that one,” you say. “Dude,” Herb chuckles, “we all do. Why do you think I came up here? I’m just on a walkabout, dude. A walkabout.” Herb sprints out in front, rides up the face of a steep roller, then yawps a joyous “woo-hoo!” as his bow slams down into the trough. You smile to yourself before catching up.
It’s dark and you’re alone in your tent on Maple Island. The forest surrounding the campground obscures any view of the water, but you can hear it sloshing gently against the rocks on shore. Lying there, you can feel the undulations of the lake, almost as if you were still in your boat. The clients, a group of college kids, are sitting around the campfire, telling stories. You “went to bed” about a half hour ago, knowing that was the only excuse that would give you a little time to yourself. After paddling all day, shouting instructions, then schlepping all the gear, setting up camp, cooking dinner, eating and then cleaning up—all while maintaining a healthy level of smiling enthusiasm—you are ready for a break. You’re tired, but the adrenaline from being in the spotlight is keeping you from falling asleep.
You can hear them talking now, talking about the guide. That’s you. It feels good to be the center of attention, the leader, the hero, the authority figure. But it’s also a barrier between you and them. You’ll always be just outside of the circle. On the water, even when you’re with your group, you still feel alone. Guiding, you’ll usually take out only ten clients or fewer—most of them in double kayaks—but it’s always just you. Mornings, or before a long trip, you’ll get to see the other guides: your friends. But once on the water you’re on your own. So, yes, sometimes you do get lonely.
Lakeview in the summer is full of tourists. But you were here first; you knew the town and its feel before they arrived. And since the tourists aren’t a part of that essence, they don’t seem real. The other guides, the people you work with, are the only ones who really exist. But not the tourists. You walk along the street and they are obstacles. They move, of course, get in your way, but you navigate around them. They are relegated to the periphery. Often, however, they’ll speak, and say things like, “It’s too hot to paddle,” or “Can we go to Outer Island?” or “I’m pretty warm-blooded; I won’t need a wetsuit, will I?” And you answer them politely and succinctly, the way you’d answer a four-year-old when he asks why the sky is blue. But they’re always at a distance: Even when you’re at your most charismatic, even when you’re having the most fun, you never let them in. If you’re good, if you’re funny or exceptionally patient, or if you teach them well, they’ll remember you forever.
But you forget about them. You forget about them because even though today was great fun, and even though it seemed like you had a lot in common with the brunette on your Cobble Island Overnight, they’ll all be gone tomorrow. Yes, they’ll be gone, but you have to get up and do it all over again. And maybe keeping them on the periphery is the only way to stay sane. Because every once in a while you’ll be out just long enough to make friends, to see these people as, well, people—and maybe it hurts too much to be friends with someone you’ll never see again. So you climb into your tent early, you paddle just a bit behind the group, and you never give too much away.
June goes by. You’ve paddled in sun, rain, fog, waves, wind and glassy calms that were so still they frightened you. You’ve done half-day trips, day trips, a few overnights. You’ve had easy clients who practically did all the work for you, you’ve had overweight attorneys from Chicago who did more bullshitting than paddling, and you’ve even dealt with seasick kids who barfed all over their sprayskirts.
The lake has many faces, many moods, many colors, and you’re starting to recognize a few of them. The sky is huge here, and it talks to you. It tells you when to be on the water and when to get off, and you’re learning to listen. It’s still stressful to be responsible for the safety of these people. But you’re feeling it less and less. And it’s always awkward meeting new clients, but you’ve got your routine wired: the instructional lectures and the demonstrations and the clever jokes flow out of you so well that they’ve become effortless. You buy a few postcards and mail them to friends back home. You write a letter to Matt and, reading it over, you wonder if you’re not even getting a little cocky. Amy hasn’t written but, then again, they don’t have mail carriers in the Khumbu Region, do they?
It’s a breezy evening and violet clouds are sailing across the darkening sky. You finally got a whole day off, so you drove into town to buy yourself a couple of Tom Petty CDs. On the way back, you even picked up a bottle of Chianti and some pasta. It’s been a while since you’ve actually cooked on a real stove in your own cabin. You look around and smile. The place is almost starting to feel like home.
The chopped garlic and olive oil are just starting to sizzle in the cast iron skillet when you get the call.
The voice on the phone is familiar, but it’s not making sense. “Matt is dead,” the voice says. You shut off the stereo. Say that again? “Matt is dead.” You turn off the stove. Uh, you’re serious, right? “Afraid so.” You sit down at the table, holding the phone in one hand, your head in the other. Uh, so how . . . ? “Car accident, last night.” Was his wife . . . ?
Broken leg. Emergency room. Jesus. Silence. Then more details. Phone numbers. So sorry. Can you get back here? I’m not . . . . I think so . . . . I’m . . . . (silence). Thanks for the call.
It takes a minute or two. You see the vegetables on the counter, the pan on the stove. They are a million miles away. Then the tears come.
Days pass. There’s an airplane, hugs with old friends, a church, more tears, and also, now, laughter, remembering. But home doesn’t feel like home anymore. It’s just another place, familiar, but strange too. All too soon, another airplane.
Pearl’s Coffee and Tea House is very cozy and has a great French roast, so you go there a lot. You read, you write, and you think about anything other than kayaking. July went by fast, and that’s a good thing. The dream job, guiding—paddling for a living—is work now. You swap shifts. You give away trips to other guides. Your teaching becomes terse, impatient. The enthusiasm that came easily in June is gone. You don’t talk much if you don’t have to. A smile is a rare event indeed. Clients ask: “Do you like your job?” You say: “Kind of tough to call sea kayaking a job.” But that’s a lie. You hide in your tent on overnights. The word “pensive” finds its way into your daily vocabulary. You check your P.O. box, sometimes twice a day, but there’s nothing from Amy. Your friends ask: “You okay?” You say: “Sure, why?” and head for the coffee joint, alone. You wonder if the old cabin on Refuge Island is still standing.
One day, Herb says, “He’s not really gone, you know. He’ll be in the wind and the earth.” So, you start looking. You notice a lone seagull soaring on a sunny day, practicing. You see a squall move in from the west, and watch the distinct gray curtain of rain sweep across the surface of the water, obscuring everything behind it. You hear a loon call in the pre-dawn hours and you call back. You feel the coolness of a gentle breeze on your cheeks as you sit in the open doorway of your tent. You marvel at the way a clear, brilliant blue sky perfectly frames a grove of balsam firs on Crichton Island. You smell the faint aroma of pine needles and the sweet aliveness of the sea, masked only by that of the cowboy coffee that’s brewing on the camp stove. You taste, as if for the first time, a hot dinner of burritos with refried beans, Spanish rice, fresh green peppers, salsa and shredded cheddar cheese. And it’s all so big that sometimes it fills you up and you overflow, and you’re glad you remembered your sunglasses so the clients don’t see you cry. This time though, the tears come with a smile, and every once in a while there’s something that almost feels like clarity.
Diablo Island is the northernmost of the 22 islands in the archipelago. The early native settlers called it “Spirit Island,” because they believed it was haunted by the tormented dead. On the north side of the island, there are many sea caves carved from the copper-colored sandstone cliffs. When storms come, the lake’s powerful waves ravage these cliffs, and wind howling through the caves creates moaning and screaming noises that can be heard from miles away. There is one ranger there. He stays without a break for the entire season, living on the island’s northern tip in the turn-of-the-century buildings that once serviced the lighthouse. Sea kayakers visit Diablo Island, but not often. If weather moves in, you can be stranded there for days. One of the Barn’s trips goes there. It’s six days long—the longest—and it will be your last of the summer. “It’s our most exposed trip,” the shop owner says. So, naturally, you want it.
The trip starts off like this: There are two clients, Tom and Gina, instead of the four who booked; more food than you can fit into three single kayaks; lots of rain; an off-shore breeze gusting to twenty or twenty-five knots, and four-foot breaking seas before you’ve even made it out of Placid Bay. “Let’s head back and sit this one out!” you yell when you see Tom disappear momentarily behind a wall of water. Turning around and paddling into the stiff wind isn’t easy, and Gina needs a tow. You clip on to her and crank toward shore. Every other wave breaks into your face and you time your breaths between them.
In twenty minutes you look up and see that you’ve covered about six feet. Luckily, Tom is an experienced paddler—he’s way out ahead. But the wind isn’t subsiding. The thought enters your mind that you might not make it. You grunt as you take each stroke and chant, “I will not stop, I will not stop.” You think of Matt. “A little help here, buddy?” The beach isn’t any closer. Another wave drenches you. Then: “Please God, just let up a little bit?” The wind gusts in your face, but you don’t stop paddling. When you hit the beach—an hour after you turned around—your muscles ache. You call for a ride and spend the night in the cabin.
Day two begins with the arrival of the other two clients, Brad and Alice. Your stress level rises. The morning is spent training them and adding extra supplies. Too little time to make it to Diablo tonight. Maple instead. You feel the little muscles in your forehead wrinkling. You think about that damned Apache on your wall. You seriously consider abandoning the whole thing, packing your car and blasting off. More clouds and wind forecasted for this afternoon. On a whim, you check your e-mail at the Barn. Finally, finally—there’s one from Amy. It begins: “I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking and . . .” Diablo Island becomes your Moby Dick.
That evening, you remember that the dock on Maple Island is a wonderful place to sit. Dinner is tasty, with good conversation, and everyone pitches in with the chores. Later, on the dock, the sky begins to clear; your head does too. The sun’s last light fades on the horizon. A crescent moon hangs low in the sky to the south. There’s a gentle breeze from the southwest and the surface of the water is calm. You exhale slowly. You write the words, “I am happy,” in your journal for the first time in a while. Tomorrow: Granite Island. Alice and Brad don’t want to be in the double kayak because it’s fat and slow. Everyone agrees to trade off. All summer you’ve squeezed into the narrowest, tippiest singles you could find because that’s what guides do. The front seat of the double is a leather couch in comparison. You can even sit Indian-style when your legs get tired. Tom offers to take the back seat to “get out of the way.” After the fifth time that you and Tom stop paddling to wait for the others, it becomes clear that “fat and slow” are relative terms. You set up camp and eat lunch on Granite, and the group settles in for a quiet afternoon. You raise an eyebrow at Tom. “Diablo?” you ask. “The double?” Tom asks. You both smile.
The sun is out, the wind is calm, and Tom’s the strongest paddler you’ve guided all season. You make the four-mile crossing to Diablo in thirty-eight minutes. You hike the mile-long trail through bog and boreal forest to the lighthouse and, from the top, you can see at least eight other islands. The Diablo Island light—which, somewhat appropriately, flashes red every ten seconds instead of the more customary white—stands one hundred feet above the surface of the water and is visible for fifteen statute miles. The tower itself is set about fifty meters away from the edge of the steep cliffs along the shoreline. Even on a calm day, waves buffet the sea caves below.
“During storms,” says the ranger, leaning nonchalantly over the tower’s railing, “sea spray from the waves reaches all the way up here. The lightkeepers would have to stay up here all night just to keep the windows clean enough so the light could still be seen. And believe me, this isn’t the most comfortable place to be in high winds.”
The ranger proceeds to tell you about the staggering growth he’s seen in the sport of kayak touring in the three summers he’s stayed at Diablo and, with it, the growth in the number of rescues the Park Service and the Coast Guard perform each season. “Now I don’t know where you two fit into all this.” The ranger eyes you and Tom carefully. “All I can say is: We keep seeing a whole lot of unprepared, inexperienced people out here.”
“I’m sorry to hear stories like that,” Tom says. “Gives the rest of us a bad name.” The ranger’s reminder is not lost as you and Tom paddle back to Rocky. You write, “Diablo Island!” in your journal that night.
The next few days are an island-tagging campaign as you and the others tick landfalls off your to-do lists: Deer, South Grand, Horn, Bear, Crichton. The last night of the trip is spent on Preston Bay, Crichton Island. A huge tombolo, or sandspit, connects the tiny spot of land known as Preston Isle with the main island of Crichton. The beaches made by this tombolo, in Preston and Augustine Bays, are arguably the two most beautiful spots in the archipelago.
That afternoon, as the warm sun sparkles off the ripples in Preston Bay, you wade fifty meters off shore and are still in knee-deep water. Tom follows in his kayak: You’ve promised to teach him the Eskimo roll. In your hubris, you’ve all but guaranteed that he’ll get it.
“I’ve been paddling for three years,” Tom says, “and I was just starting to picture myself as one of those crusty old paddlers who’s never learned to roll because they never thought they’d need it.” “Give me your paddle,” you say. “Let’s start with the hip snap.” Half an hour later, when Tom gets his first one, with no help from you, he seems to be at a loss for words.
“I . . . I just rolled my boat,” he says.
You laugh.
“I don’t believe it,” he says.
You start applauding, remembering when you first taught Matt to roll, in that little lake in Iowa, so long ago it feels like forever. “Thanks,” Tom says, “I owe you one.”
It feels good to hear that, finally, and you smile when he shakes your hand.
“No you don’t,” you say. “This is what I do.”