“But even old men have young memories.” Allen Levi, “Theo of Golden”
Decades ago, the first time I watched a moose swimming on Webb Lake in Weld, Maine, I had no idea how to help the poor thing out in the middle of a near mile wide stretch of water. If it started to founder and go down, I’d never get it into my small canoe, and a moose may not understand I’m just trying to help. My panic built. My embarrassing ignorance was apparent about the power of a moose in the water. I tagged along parallel for the rest of the way, and the bull unintentionally demonstrated how foolish I was.
The trip started on the east side of the lake where the huge animal was leisurely browsing knee deep in the water lilies, pondweed, duckweed, and horsetails off the shore. When it reached the far shore, it stood up without a pause and began to leisurely browse in similar water weeds to those he left behind as far as I could tell, not even breathing hard. I failed to see the improvement in the deliciousness of pondweed that induced a moose to swim nearly a mile, but I was not privy to the moose’s unhurried unconcern with the effort required to get to a new patch of soggy fodder.
A second lesson in Webb Lake wildlife lore occurred a few years later when I paddled a couple of miles down lake toward the southern end of the lake and the outlet into Webb River. The river was the route more than a century ago for the winter harvest of thousands of pine, hemlock, fir, and spruce logs as they were sent down the spring high water seventeen miles to the Androscoggin River and the timber mills. The longest ones with straight grain were valued as masts; they went all the way down the river to the sea and the colonial shipyards in Bath. Now the Webb River is rarely navigable most of the year as it meanders down through Carthage and forms the border between Mexico and Dixfield before it empties into the big river.
I always am the earliest riser in the camp and cherish those times when I can slip away in the canoe on the mirror surface of the early morning lake undisturbed by the winds that usually flow down from Tumbledown at the north end of the lake as the day progresses. The red predawn sky accompanies the silence broken only by the quiet splash of my paddle and the occasional plaintive loon cry, creating treasured memories. I’d get back in time to the camp to greet the sleepy ones and make breakfast.
The lake narrows considerably at the south end, and one time I came too close to a hidden loon nest I didn’t know was there along the darkened early morning east shore in a wooded area with no cabins. The male blasted out of the reeds and rose up out of the water in an impressive noisy display of aggression and wingspan spread intimidatingly wide to protect his mate and the small clutch of one or two eggs or the tiny brood of little loons (as distinct from the brood of our little loons back at camp). I detoured as fast as I could paddle to the opposite shore. I regretted spooking the birds because too many encounters with too many people could cause them to abandon the old nesting grounds they return to every year and seek a remote lake not so infested with people like me. Webb Lake without loons would break my heart.
Today’s third lesson was what prompted me to remember these Webb Lake canoe stories. I was on the lake in a large flatbottomed canoe by myself in the early afternoon and loaded no ballast rock in the front to keep the bow from lifting. I struggled to paddle without any counterweight in the front, and the wide beam made it awkward to move up in the tandem configuration. Large lakes surrounded by mountains have their own weather, and unexpected wind can flow down suddenly over the hills down into the lake like a waterfall with considerable power. The wind came up along with whitecaps. With my unwieldy bow acting like a sail, I fought uselessly to resist it and paddle back to the camp. What I could manage was to guide the canoe to a nearby shore, drag the canoe up into the woods, and walk back on the camp road. Later when the wind subsided, it was easy enough to walk back and paddle home. In the early morning, the lake is often as calm and steady as the gaze of a wise old woman on a porch waiting for the sunrise. Fighting the wind is foolish, much better to go with it to safety.
“Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told.” Wendell Berry, “Jayber Crow”
What provoked all these canoe memories to bubble up was reading about the deliverance of St. Peter from jail in Acts 12. But I expect you’ll need a connection.
Peter witnessed the bloody death of his lifelong friend James, the brother of John, at the order of King Herod. Herod then had Peter arrested to ready him for the same fate the next day. Trusting nothing to happenstance, Herod had him chained up behind bars with four guards on a rotating shift, two of them chained to Peter, one on each side. The text said the fledgling Church was praying earnestly to God for him. Peter did what anyone would do in such terrifying circumstances: he fell asleep.
The same Peter who denied Jesus in the courtyard out of fear and panic on the night of the Lord’s execution on the cross, the same impetuous, emotional Peter leaping from the boat to try and walk on water, the same Peter drawing his sword to cut off the ear of the servant in the Garden of Gethsemane, the same Peter terrified by the storm while Jesus slept in the boat. That guy once so easily riled up. Chained up awaiting a certain painful death, he nodded off now secure in the trust he had in God. Clearly something had happened to Peter.
But in my reflection on the reading, what struck me first was the angel, the messenger, the envoy on a mission from God to rescue Peter. There was no turmoil, hardly any effort, and like the wind on the lake in a flat bottomed canoe, no possibility of resistance. The jail doors fell open silently, the guards fell asleep, the chains fell off Peter like autumn leaves drift to the ground when it’s time for them to let go. The angel gently woke a drowsy Peter and led him out to the street and away. No drama and not a chance of another outcome. If God, ipsum esse, the ground of all existence from moment to moment, wills that an envoy leads Peter to safety, well, Bob’s your uncle, he’s as good as free.
Angels are sent on missions which they always complete with the power of God. Our task is to listen and do what they tell us if ever we are asked. Resistance is as futile as fighting the wind on the lake in a flat bottomed canoe. We can grumble and struggle, but all that will accomplish is to make us anxious. Guide it where it’s taking you, be thankful, pull into the woods, walk home.
“When you are old and can look back and see yourself when you were young. It is almost like looking down from Heaven.” Wendell Berry, “Hannah Coulter”
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