Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [128]
That night we camped at Rainbow Lake, a large translucent mountain lake bordered with white boulders. The boys and I had set up our campsite by mid-afternoon, and we spent the rest of the day playing and talking at the edge of the water.
We started by skipping flat pebbles against the lake’s still surface. Once most of the smooth rocks from the beach had sunk to the bottom of the lake, we threw handfuls of round pebbles into the air and listened to the noise they made as they broke the surface. Those notes turned into music, and we became a band. We timed our throws to control the chorus of percussion hitting the water. The surrounding pines provided an echo that allowed the sound of each individual splash to resonate long after the rocks had disappeared.
Our concert was interrupted when we found a small crawfish in the nearby sand. I don’t know if it was really a crawfish, because I thought crawfish just lived in the South, but we caught the animal and sequestered it in a small rocky entrapment. Then we added a leech to the aquarium so he would have a friend, but it turns out that leeches and crawfish don’t make great friends.
While I was watching the crawfish tug and poke at the leech, and the leech in turn balling up into an impenetrable black pearl, Mooch thought it would be funny to take my new mop stick and javelin it into the lake as far as he could. I was furious with him, until I realized what Mooch knew from the beginning—mop sticks float. The wind pushed the yellow plastic tube back to shore in a few minutes. Its journey was so peaceful and therapeutic that we ended up throwing it back in a few more times just to watch it gracefully sway up to the shoreline.
After a few hours, the boys left the shore to start cooking their dinners. Since I didn’t cook, I stayed by the water.
With Nightwalker and Mooch preoccupied and out of sight, I crept along the shoreline to a large white boulder. I climbed on top of the rock where no one could see me and took off my clothes, laying them on the warm granite beside me. Then, after taking one last minute to absorb the warmth of the rock and look into the sun’s dwindling rays, I dove into the clear cool waters below.
Totally submerged, with my hair floating toward the surface and my limbs weightless around me, I embraced the unencumbered sensation of being surrounded by water. Rising back to the surface, I looked at my half-white, half-brown body beneath the water. I was amazed at the physical transformation that had taken place since Georgia. I never knew that I could be this strong and fit.
I looked up into the blue sky toward Katahdin. It was like a dream, too far away to touch but too close to be a mirage. I dipped down below the surface and came back up, but the mountain was still there. I laughed and looked up to the sky. I had done it.
Abol Stream Campground was home to an RV park and the first public road in over a hundred miles. The campground separated the Hundred Mile Wilderness from Katahdin’s Baxter State Park, and featured simple amenities like restrooms and a small store.
The store had a pay phone, where four quarters bought me two minutes of talk time and one minute of the operator telling me that my time was almost up, first in English and then in Spanish. My first attempt to reach my dad was unsuccessful, so I left a message and went inside the store to scrounge up some lunch.
After trying to occupy myself with food and people-watching inside the RV park, I tried calling my father again. This time he picked up.
“Jen, hello?” Crackle. “Is that you?“ Snap. “We’re getting close to Kata—” Pop, pop, pop. “Where do you—” buzzz “—meet us?”
The phone line was filled with static, but I could gather that he was close and wanted to know where to