We walked into work via the Storr's Hill trail again. The strange candle remains seen on our last visit have all been removed. In fact it is pretty clean and tidy, except for the empty Michelob can and Salems pack someone left behind.
Zeke swam a few laps in the pool at the base of the falls. I tossed a stick to get him going, but that was just to prime the pump, he swam in circles, gnawing the stick and enjoying the cool water. The pool is a little deeper. Each year someone, maybe the same someone, stacks rocks along the downstream edge in an attempt to dam it. This year's stacker has been really going at it with rocks piled over a foot high. Unlike the beavers, though, this dam builder isn't using roots, branches, or mud to chink the gaps and thus the pool is only slightly deeper for the effort.
It is interesting to observe a seldom visited area and try to imagine the scenes played out:
The pool is filled with the splashing and laughing of the two kids beating each other with foam noodles. Their mom sits in the shade, smoking Salems and sharing a Michelob with her friend Sara.
"Beats the hell out of the city pool," she says, sitting back with a sigh.
Sara continues boasting about her new boyfriend--the house painter with his long braid of hair and affinity for Vodka--while absently tugging at the bathing suit to smooth a wrinkle. The wrinkle is that it is not a wrinkle at all, but a baby belly roll and her first sign of hitting thirty-five. The painter hasn't noticed it, or, as Sara smiles and flushes to think, has been too busy to notice. Hiding the flush, she gets up.
"Boy it's hot. I'm going to join the kids. Coming?"
"Knock yourself out. I'm not moving the rest of the day, maybe all week."
Mr. Thomas teaches first grade, delivers mail in the Summer, and lives down the street in a second story apartment. The hot weather always drives him out of the apartment and this evening finds him hauling rocks. His students would be surprised to see the Salem stuck in the corner of his mouth, one eye squinting from the rising smoke. On the side of the pond a pair of black socks are neatly folded across sandals. Mr. Thomas, pant legs rolled up neatly, wades across the face of the pool looking for just the right place for each rock. Behind him, nestled into the age worn granite of the rushing falls is a can of Michelob, cooling. Before heading home he'll pop the top and sit in the shallow section of water admiring his handiwork. Normally he packs his trash out but the approach of loud, young voices will interrupt his solitude and he'll forget them in his scramble to avoid contact.
"Jack, you bastard." Andy thinks to himself, finishing off the last can of Michelob and tossing it. Below, in a deeper section of the water, his best friend Jack is doing something with Andy's girlfriend and her giggling screams are starting to piss him off. He didn't want to come here anyways. Jack said he was hot and Linda thought a swim was a great idea. Andy hates water, always has and they both know it. So he sits in the shade chain smoking Salem's and finishing off the beer he had promised to share. "Jaa..aack!!" Linda exclaims and it is all Andy can do to not bean him with a nearby rock. He stands up, doing his best to look bored, and says, "Hey, let's head. I've got shit to do."
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