Untangled
by Lowell Weber

Dazzling blues meet at two distant lines of trees across the lake, one real, one reflected. Intermittent breeze, and in between the occasional gentle ripples, the mirror image is flawless. No houses or motorboats, no one else at all makes the scene all the more endearing in its surreal wildness. Not many places left free of people south of the Artic Circle. Not many places above it anymore either. Oil, gold, iron — the plunder of the earth continues in the places it has been hardest to extract, the only places left.

Lowering my gaze, I examine the mess in my lap: a monkey puzzle of thin fishing line. My rod, reel removed, sits at my side, held in a crack in the rock to prevent it from rolling in. I think, why me, why now? This is the third time this trip, much the worst. It has to be the reel. No more fishing this afternoon.

I look up at the scene around me, in no hurry to get started. The boulder I’m sitting on is made of granite, unblemished but for a single crack forged by ten thousand winter freezes and spring thaws. It angles across the stone, then slopes down into the lake my partner and I have been fishing since yesterday. We are in the canoe country along the Canadian border, land scraped clean of top soil by the mile high glaciers that slid south twenty thousand years ago. Uneven bedrock is all they left, the low places filled with waters. No good for farming.

We have fishing licenses for both Minnesota and Ontario in case we paddle over the line. No billboards here welcoming you to Canada. An Ontario Provincial Park has kept the area pristine to the north and a National Park of questionable credentials has arrested development up stream. Everything here drains into Hudson Bay eventually, which seems strange because Lake Superior is much closer. High ground surrounds the lake’s north shore, so the drainage basin is to the northwest. Then again, most people don’t know the Mississippi River begins its journey to New Orleans by briefly flowing North in Minnesota, before turning South. Water flows where it can.

The air around me is as fresh as it can be in this smoke-choked century, the lake water as clear as it can be in this murky millennium. The sun is warm in an expanse of azure unmarred by the tendrils of jet contrails or the benign wisps of summer clouds. And my seat is comfortably warm in its speckled granite pinkness. I decide to bury my head in the stone and live right here in this moment, what happens elsewhere will have to wait.

Below me the water is crystal clear for thirty feet, a rocky slope to a sandy bottom. Land of rock and water — that’s how this area is labeled on an old map I bought from a tourist shop years back. Not an original, of course, but a replica of an 1840’s survey of what was then the Wisconsin Territory. Pines, moss, lichens and granite. We drink the water after treating it, not to guard against pollution, but against the unimpeded life that claims the lake and summer heat as its own. Getting ill out here would be an expensive proposition. The only way out in an emergency is by chopper. Only the rich can afford emergencies.

My partner, Judy, has taken the canoe out a short way and is fishing as she drifts slowly towards the creek that is the only outlet to the lake. She’s the expert in this backwoods enterprise. I’ve come to it late but enjoy it nearly as much as she does. She can get back to camp alone in the canoe much faster than I can, almost faster than if I’m in front helping. Mastered the J stroke when she was a grade schooler. The trick is to keep the canoe pointing where you want it to go without switching sides with the paddle every other stroke. The trick is to use it as a rudder at the end of each stroke without losing all the momentum. She has a very light touch.

She is a remarkable woman in many ways. Not a rabid survivalist, just a small town girl who lives more outdoors than inside. In her late twenties, her suntanned face and arms are a product of summer just as her pallid whiteness is a product of winter. No tanning booths for her. Her long, straight black hair and round features evince her mixed white and Native American heritage.

I, on the other hand, have enough African ancestors to lend me a dark Mediterranean look, though I can pass for white if I have to. I’m what I need to be depending on the circumstances.

Here and with her, I am me.

The day continues, warm with a lazy breeze. I wear my floppy fishing hat. The glare from the lake hasn’t started yet.

I reluctantly look again at the mess my fishing line has made of itself and sigh. Judy will catch supper if she hasn’t already, so there’s no particular pressure on my part to get this squared away, but I attempt it anyway.

First rule of unravelling line is: don’t make it worse by pulling anything tight. Anything that doesn’t want to slip free, don’t force it. Rule two, let the knots tell you how to loosen them. Feel your way, gently pulling anything that wants to come in a particular direction. Rule three, give yourself plenty of space. I have an entire rock to spread things out on. Rule four, don’t be in a hurry. If you are, then write the whole thing off and get a new reel and line.

I have another reel with me and might use it going forward, but I’m not going to throw this one away. For one thing, there is no away out here to throw things. I wouldn’t dream of dumping it into the lake or burning it up in the camp fire. Black sooty smoke could hang over us in this light breeze. Besides, packing out a Black Widow’s web of chaotic nylon doesn’t have any appeal. Better to sort it out here where the view is far more brilliant than the fisherman.

I learned to fish like I learned to swim, later in life. Judy taught me that if you can float, you can live. If you can swim, you can get where you want to go. Learning to float without being able to touch bottom was terrifying. But floating without a life preserver gave me confidence that my fate was in my hands. I wasn’t going to drown unless I lost my head. After that it was simply a matter of learning to minimize thrashing, while maximizing linear progress.

Judy does an elaborate pantomime of laughter from the canoe. She knows me well enough to bring a smile to my face with her antics. Slowly the line unwinds under my careful devotions. I realize I’m enjoying myself. Simple tasks have become a part of my life now. Finding standing dead wood for the campfire, the fallen stuff is too wet I’ve learned. Cooking over the campfire flames in a cast iron pan without burning myself or the fish. Telling the time by the sun, predicting the weather by the sky. Finding pleasure in the mundane, solace in the silence, as though I am aware for the first time of something larger than myself, more durable and serene.

I’ve become untangled.

Lowell Weber has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his loving wife and faithful dog and is delighted they still put up with him.

Photo by Josh Hild.