Boat-wise, sometimes less is more
by Stephanie Piper
It's called a john boat, and based on its appearance, I have to conclude that John was one low-tech, back-to-basics kind of guy.
It's painted the shade of green once reserved for hospital wards and church basements, and it's patched in several places with silver bursts of electrical tape.
To board this craft on a busy Saturday at our local marina, to arrange oneself among the fishing rods and the coolers and the damp towels, to unhitch the lines and chug out into the open water flanked by state-of-the-art Sea Rays and sleek pontoon numbers is to taste true humility.
Bumping across the wakes of these show-offs, maneuvering with care around floating logs and assorted flotsam, it's tempting to fantasize about a 30-foot cabin cruiser with a flying bridge.
But as we ease out of the main channel and nose into a secluded cove, less becomes significantly more.
The water here is shallow, too low for a big boat. We glide along the wooded bank, ducking tree branches, listening to the silence. We turn off the motor and drift into the shade with the help of this summer's capital improvement: a pair of sturdy oars.
The light is by Monet or Pissarro, greenish-gold, filtered through leaves, shimmering on the glassy surface. An osprey rises from the shore with a wooden clacking of wings and soars away, cawing disapproval at our presence. He's right, of course. This place belongs to wild things, to the creatures rustling in the underbrush, to the dragonfly spinning past in a flash of iridescent blue. We are the intruders, but we move quietly, feathering our oars, nudging deeper into a wilderness no high-tech cruiser could navigate.
We cast a desultory line or two, luring bass and bluegill from their secret hollows. It's more like tag than fishing. The catch of the day, two six-inch specimens, are back in the water before they know they've been out. We eat our sandwiches in a pool of shade as a doe moves soundlessly through the birches in the woods above.
Downriver, we anchor near the base of some jagged cliffs. Wildflowers spill from crevices just out of reach. A single red leaf spirals down and lands at my feet. It's still high summer, but there are tiny stirrings of color in the trees above, whispers of the fall to come, October days when the jet skis are silent and the mists rise like smoke to reveal the blaze of maples and dogwood, birch and hickory.
We explore an inlet ringed with pastures. Cows wade in the shallows, and we drift between them and a sudden, skidding whoosh of geese. Beyond us, the river beckons. A big boat, I'm told, could go all the way to New Orleans from here—clear down the Tennessee to the Mississippi, and right out into the gulf.
I lean against the cooler and feel the sun on my legs, listen to the cattle lowing from the bank, the wind in the pin oaks. The water laps our green hull, and I trail my fingers, reaching for here and now.
July 6, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 27
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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