Читать книгу The Inventors - Peter Selgin - Страница 17

I LIVE ON A LAKE IN CENTRAL GEORGIA, IN A MODEST gray A-frame with large triangular windows framing a view of the water and my dock, where two weather-beaten Adirondack chairs are angled toward each other as if in conversation. The view is partly obstructed by a pair of tall white pines, one of which succumbed recently to the dreaded bark beetle and whose needles have turned brown. Soon it will have to come down.

I start my days with a swim across the inlet and back, a distance of just under a mile. I walk down to the dock, drape my towel over one of the chairs, snap on my bright yellow swim cap and goggles, and lower myself into the tea-brown water via the rusty ladder across which a spider has been busy all night, spinning a web for mayflies.

At that hour the water is warmer than the air. A ghostly layer of fog hovers over it. I dogpaddle to the front of the dock, sight my target – a stand of pines across the way – and head off doing a swift crawl, counting my strokes. Since I moved here two years ago I’ve been trying to determine the exact number of strokes needed to reach the other side of the inlet. No matter how hard I concentrate, at around 150 strokes I always lose track. By my best estimate it takes between 180 and 200 strokes to cross, a figure that’s bound to mean very little to you, though it helps me judge my progress and choose intervals of rest.

At this hour there are no boats out. That’s something lake swimmers have to worry about: powerboats. They don’t always look where they’re going, especially when towing skiers or screaming kids on rafts or tubes. Jet skiers, that exuberant subspecies, are the most worrisome. Still, I’ve made my peace with the possibility of a watery death, preferring that to any death on dry land.

Having counted around 200 strokes I know when I put my feet down they’ll touch sandy bottom. The patch of shore by that stand of pines is a favorite hunting ground for herons. Often I’ll surprise one, just in time to see him spread his smoky wings and alight – with a primordial squawk – across the water.

Then back to the dock, to my chair and towel. There’s enough privacy here so if I wanted to I could swim in the nude. Most of the homes dotting the shore belong to vacationers and retirees. I rarely see my neighbors and they rarely see me – a good thing, since by Georgia standards my skimpy Speedo amounts to indecent exposure.

Back indoors, having changed and hung my goggles and dripping Speedo on a brass hook by the door, I make an espresso and take it up to the loft where I have my desk and where – facing the triangular window with its view through the trees of the dock – remembering, I write.