Tanner Z. Landsight - Of Rafts and Lightning Bugs

It is winter. The snow drifts are deep along Rink Road and I bide my time thinking about spring and summer. Yesterday, due to the weather, I was unable to make it to work. The power was off for five or six hours and I had time to think. Here is some of what I thought about:

I appreciate electricity. I enjoy lights and heat and microwaves and flushing toilets. I am not as good at leisure as I used to be. I sat in my basement and read a few chapters of the first Harry Potter book and couldn't get past the feeling that I should have been at work or doing something 'more productive.'

Tanner wasn't like that. I know he appreciated modern conveniences, but he lived in the moment. If he had been snowed in, he would have been outside building a snow fort or strapping on a pair of snowshoes to take a walk. If he sat down to read, he would not have let his thoughts drift to other projects. Reading would have been productive enough.

Here is a Tanner article that includes scenes of summer. I hope you enjoy.

Of Rafts and Lightning Bugs

by Tanner Z. Landsight

10/26/2005

Sometimes I like to go out after dark and watch lightning bugs. Sometimes they are so abundant that it's like being in a three dimensional planetarium. My favorite spot to watch them is at a secluded pond in the woods below my house. It really isn't much more than a mud hole, but I've had many adventures on its shores. Everyone needs a place like this when growing up.

Bullhead and bass are plentiful in this pond. Once, my friend Jon and I cooked bullhead in clay. We left it in the coals too long and it burned. Blackened bullhead isn't like blackened catfish. Being extremely hungry we tried it anyway. Somewhere we managed to scavenge two tiny pieces that were white enough to eat.

It tasted like chicken.

No, really! You'll hear a lot of people say that this or that tastes like chicken and I think it's due to a plan devised by some intelligent, scientist chicken who either altered human taste buds or the meat of every other creature. It backfired though. We still don't eat any less chicken.

Most things don't actually taste like chicken anyway, they taste like woodchuck, which isn't bad necessarily, it just isn't chicken. But the bullhead really did taste like chicken. Chicken and charcoal.

I built a raft for this pond - an eight by eight, engineering marvel made entirely of furring strips and inch-and-a-quarter screws. The shell fit over four barrels and rode high in the water. I painted it an inconspicuous sky blue because I was going through a blue phase. It just wouldn't have been the same any other color. The center of this monstrosity was removable. I'm not sure why, it seemed ingenious at the time. The strips in that area were tight together and collected water whenever it rained - a design flaw that would prove fatal.

I had grand plans for a party raft to rival Coligula. (For those of you unfamiliar with the man and his floating palace, he was a Midwestern polka star famous for playing the accordian and the kazoo at the same time. Well, I could be wrong, that might be someone else. My history is a bit rusty.)

As it turned out, I mostly used the raft for fishing. The pond is almost entirely surrounded by trees and my fishing skills are such that if there were only one tree - I'd catch it. With close to a hundred, I had more woods casts than water casts. I'm not sure if any fish live in the trees, but I never even got a bite.

The raft was the perfect solution. It was big enough for two. My friend Kevin and I could both fish off it at the same time. I still flinch when I hear anything buzz past my ear. Kevin hasn't asked me to fish with him in awhile.

The raft was a great place to watch lightning bugs and hear the rhythmic, guttural chorus of bullfrogs accompanied by cicadas, peepers and mosquitoes the size of pterodactyls. I'd slap at them in time. Coligula would have been proud.

And then my brother Ken, my cousin Aron and I took a fateful trip out on the water. We were just polin' about doing our best Huck Finn impressions. No fishing - just going for a ride. About two inches of water happened to be inside the center and we decided to dump it out right there in the middle of the pond. I forgot to tell them that the barrels weren't strapped in. (Another design flaw, but who is counting?)

We gently lifted the center out and all was well. We emptied it over the side and still no problems. We were starting to congratulate ourselves when the ghost of Coligula himself intervened. The first barrel exploded through the center hole faster than poop through a goose.

Ken and Aron went down into the waves as the other barrels shifted. I was lifted upward. I spread my arms and shouted like a fire-and-brimstone preacher in a groove. I was the captain - tall and proud.

The second barrel gushed out and I dropped a bit. So did my optimism.

I watched with amusement as Ken and Aron struggled through the muck toward shore. I was still dry and contemplating a way to reassemble the barrels while staying that way.

The third barrel slipped out and spun lazily upon the water. One barrel left and the water was at my ankles now.

Flashes of inspiration come much like flashes of stupidity. I sometimes get them confused. I figured that I could climb onto one of the floating barrels and paddle my way to shore. This captain wasn't going down with the ship! I think that I've seen it done in the movies which everyone knows means that it is real. I was confident, so I jumped!

Right up until my body hit the barrel I expected it to work. Somewhere in my mind I must have remembered Newton’s Law - the one about a jackass in motion. I'm pretty sure that he got that one in a flash like I did. An addendum to that law would read: jumping onto a barrel in the water is just plain DUMB.

For about five-hundredths of a second I did an ungraceful balancing act and then both the barrel and I continued rolling. When I surfaced there was a small crowd applauding on the bank. I spat out mud and a few fish - these didn’t taste like chicken - and swam to join them.

Unfortunately the raft suffered serious structural damage and a few weeks later I took it away from the pond. It never went back.

I still have adventures at that pond. Now I take my nephew Logan with me. I'm thinking about making another raft so that he and I can pole about like Huck Finn or that accordian and kazoo fellow.

Last night the lightning bugs were out in the zillions. I sat on my porch and watched them. I couldn't help wishing that the big blue raft was still around. I was fondly contemplating the project to build another when one of those flashing beetles crashed into my mouth.

They taste a bit like woodchuck…

Until next time,

Read, Learn, Live