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Page One of a New Chapter
 Some
places become our life’s anchors. For me that place is Lake Superior.
It’s a place where beginnings, middles and ends repeat in a pleasant
cycle; where time can come in small increments or can take a rest all
together; where uncertainty or complexity can be exchanged for clarity
and purpose. It’s a place to which I’ve always felt - since my boyhood
- I could come home.
Adolescence is a challenge for anyone, but I felt as though I
needed to endure those years and experiences as a prerequisite to
independence.
But on Lake Superior I broke through the constraints. On the family’s good ship Loosdrecht,
I found more than one chance to “save the day.” Whether a peril real or
imagined, when the indefatigable Skipper, short on patience or energy,
placed me at the helm, I found my emancipation.
A snoot-full of Lake Superior air and a view of its large
expanse filled me with confidence and made me anxious to explore what
lay beyond.
In those awkward years, I learned that the people along those
shores instilled in me a curiosity that gave direction and anticipation.
That excitement was never truer than on what became Page One of a significant new chapter in my life.
It seemed, at first, a typical arrival to another port on
another extended Lake Superior voyage. These arrivals often followed
hours of being captive to the whims of winds, the sometimes painfully
slow progress of a sailboat. This relatively small dock filled with
boats and people meant socializing beyond my closely quartered family.
After the securing chores, I dressed in my best on-shore
clothes (those that disguised my skinny frame). One foot poised for the
dock, I was already searching for signs of youth on the old boat tied
just ahead of us. What I saw caused a most graceless landing: my foot
fell between boat and dock and I landed on my hands. Yanking myself up,
I tried to look as though I’d finished a high dive with a perfect
triple flip. I renewed my stare at the swimsuit-clad member of the
opposite sex who just made her effortless transition to dry land. Her
beaming smile, directed at a friend, stunned me to the point of
paralysis. I would have been better off paralyzed; I tripped on a dock
plank and fell to my knees.
Well, it at least captured her attention. Her glance of sincere pity said, “Poor boy, are you OK?”
Once again, I jumped and looked accusingly at the dock line.
“Naughty line,” I inferred, relooping it around the cleat. She smiled
again, this time at me. You could have knocked me over with a feather.
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Jim Marshall and the author, Jan Reyers, head out in Skipper Sam II
(a powerboat, not a sailboat). Photo by Bonnie Reyers
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Later I got into a crowd where my introduction was
unavoidable. Again that most sincere, warmest smile I had ever seen
from a teenage girl. My tongue wrapped around my tonsils, as I repeated
my first name. “You know, like when you wake up in the morning … Yawn.
Well, it’s not my real name. A lot of my friends call me Jan … because
that’s how it’s spelled. I mean, it’s not Jan, but the way it’s
supposed to be pronounced is too tough … so I like to be called Yawn,
you know, like what you do when you’re bored … no that’s not what I
mean, I mean … ah, my name’s Yawn.”
“That’s neat,” she said.
Neat. She said I was neat. Wow!!
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
She asked about our boat (“Did you all come out of that
boat?”) and where we’d been (“So you really crossed Lake Superior in
that boat?”). Obviously, she didn’t understand the virtues of sailing
or how much manliness it took to wrestle a sailboat.
“So, have you ever seen the Witch Tree?” she asked.
“Excuse me?” I responded with all the intelligence of a boat fender.
“The Witch Tree … it’s this neat old tree that stands alone
on a rock just around the corner of this point. I was thinking of going
out there. Do you want to come along?”
“How would we get there?”
“We have a dinghy … with a motor,” she chortled.
That should have tipped me off. Not just the “a motor,” as
though it were some superior or more engaging form of propulsion, but
that it was attached to a small dinghy. That, and the glint in her eye
should have been sufficient clues. But by now firmly in her trance, I
mustered my deepest, variable-pitch voice, “Sure, why not?”
A 4- to 6-foot sea, for one reason. We strapped on life
jackets as we stepped into the floating bathtub. She took the stern and
expertly pulled the starter rope. After a few tugs, the engine spewed
its blue smoke.
Her father tossed the painter line into the boat and said, “Good luck.”
Did we need luck?
She spun the boat before I was seated, causing me to windmill
my arms as I fell into the bow. Her father shook his head as if to say,
“another victim.” She laughed. It would become a string of laughter.
Leaving the dock, we hit waves right away. Manageable, but in
that dinghy, even a boat wake threatened to rock the standby oars
overboard.
“Would you like me to take over?” I asked in the condescending tone typical of a juvenile male.
“No, I’ve got it,” she said as though a sailboat lover wouldn’t know the throttle from a prop.
As we approached the open lake, common sense overcame my
platonic lust. Did I really know this girl? She did came from a
powerboat. Perhaps her nautical judgment wasn’t all there.
My increasing anxiety escalated her glee and laughter. Each
time I asked, “Are you sure we should keep going?” she was surer than
ever.
To this day, I don’t know that I really saw the Witch Tree.
She pointed and yelled over the wind, “There it is!” Each time I
turned, we were in a trough. When I clutched the seat, embedding
fingernails into the wood, she squeezed my leg in reassurance, flooding
my senses and completely disorienting me. The whole trip took forever
and yet was over in an instant, thrilling and petrifying. Here was a
girl who enjoyed sensory overload, had a daring flair for adventure and
a strong sense of where she wanted to go.
That chance meeting in Grand Portage, Minnesota, and that
small dinghy on the open lake introduced me to the person who, after
many similar escapades, became my wife.
And Bonnie’s father, the one who wished us, “Good luck”?
His name is Jim Marshall.
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