May 05 2008
Plishhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Plishhhhhhhhhhhhh…
and then a second splash.
Deep in a dreamless dream on the front porch of the Canadian cabin, early morning rays slant and play reflections of the rippled waters like glittering trails lapping across the ceiling. that is the first 1/2 second of consciousness.
A woofing snort of a huge exhale.
Tom is sleeping beside me. I push him awake and simultnaeously sit upright my attention riveted outside.
This is a place of peace and ultimate luxury. The luxury is in the air-clean,fresh, ffillinf my entire body with each intake of breath with life-giving excitement. The cabin lies 3 miles from the nearest road. Three water miles. To get to this place of harmony you take a boat past high granite cliffs, Alligator Rock, Wheeler Island, through the narrows at Pickeral Point where the view opens up to the distant LaCloche Mountains. Continue past Blueberry Island filled in July with fat berries, past the falls coming in on the left where the Whitefish River enters Charlton Lake. Rounding the cliff opposite Horseshoe Island you can see the tiniest outline of The Lookout on the bluff above the cabin.
The land is high, rocky, wild, free. Moose I’ve seen here plunge into the water from a beaver lodge and swim across the lake.
The cabin sits on the north shore, right at the water line. A mere50 feet separate it from the point across. We sleep on the porch,our bed just under the windows.
As I sit upright, I see the deer hrul itself up on the land and scramble up the bluff. It is followed by a seond buck plunging headlong upward.
What have they seen? What frightens them?
I look across the 50 feet of water to the peninsula and see clearly.
I push Tom again.
Urgently I whisper, as if it makes a difference,
I point, as it that makes a difference. He sees as quickly as I. WE are rigid in attention,
“A wolf!”
Teachers as Writer:
Community of writers rationale and experience makes us better teachers of writing
Goal: produce a piece of writing by the fall to be includeded in a technological anthology
Writing Prompt: Sounds handouts and experience
Instructor produces souonds without visual aides; students write.
As follows:
Sounds
Unseen sounds: what does each one evoke? emotionally? personally?
1. tamborine: monks from the far east, lines of them in orangesaffron robes, shaved heads
2. cow bell: swiss mountain top, meadow looking down with hot blue sky and cool shivery breeze, seeing the ahripins turns flowing, fadding in the distnace as far as the eye can wander peaks of the Alps snowy
3.marble rolling: Rio, my granddaughter and I sit together and amke a ring of rubberbands. She is four years old. then we shoot marbles, using the boulder as the shooter. We are carefree, intent, together touching
4.baby rattle: gentle, tiny sound emitted with a hush behind it.
5. small bell: tinkles like a bike bell. I’m riding in the neighborhood in Deerfield, Ill. Stratford Rd. I’m eight years old. It’s a brand new bike. New wheels. A sense of freedom.
6. wooden blocks clapped together: pounding in pegs on the floor of the beautiful house of my parents. My mother remarried, step-dad-they’ve bought the home of my high school best friend
7. triangle: some old chuckwagon guy is calling together the cowpokes for a dinner of beans and bad coffee, better but bitterer than nothing. The sun has almost set, long shadows.
8. Dice roll on the table: We sit, a group of seven or eight, at the table on the porch at the cabin on Wheeler Lake. Under a big stained glass lamp and we’ll play until we laugh ourselves hoarse.
9. The wooden push duck rolls on rubber feet. A series of toddlers push it across the old wooden floor at the cabin. It is a primitive toy, but well-loved,just a stick, a wooden duck and rubber feet that flap.
10. Cell phone rings: “Will somebody please get that?” it always rings. It’s a common tone.
11. A low bell: it isn’t but sounds light a lighthouse bell in the far distance. fog rolls in. Night has happened.
