My wife and I live next to a very large pond euphemistically named Dream Lake. A developer built a dam at the west end of a gully, and a small natural spring slowly filled the “lake” to its current narrow fjord-like shape and depth thus allowing the developer to market his lots as “waterfront”. If you do a google earth search on the term “Dream Lake, WA” you will see a beautiful remote mountain lake in the Cascade Mountains, crystal clear, deep, and isolated. This isn’t that. Our Dream Lake is a stagnant deadfall choked lily pad and cattail infested, shallow eutrophic algae growing goose poop treatment pond guaranteed to tannin stain your hair, skin, and suit should you decide to take a dip. How shallow is it? The State of Washington says it is a class three wetland. It attracts invasive bull frogs, diseased racoons, and Newfoundland dogs. In the deepest part (ten feet) there are bass, crawfish and large black carp – these last undoubtedly descended from goldfish released by tearful small children and relieved mothers.
We do love living next to it because if you don’t get too close, it’s nice to look at and we can pump irrigation water from it. On our island off the coast of Washington State, we are arid from Memorial Day to Halloween with less than two inches of rain. With a shallow well pump, we can irrigate the yard, two small orchards and our vegetable garden. As an extra benefit, this water is essentially compost tea without the bother of having to brew it.
However, every August, the pump pressure drops to a trickle and the irrigation program halts. The problem is that the intake filter screen is clogged with all the tiny bits of decomposing plant matter, suspended in the watery matrix. This necessitates the annual Intake Maintenance Expedition.
The author ready for the adventure.
So, on a hot day, I retrieved the oars out of the garden shed, donned my baggy bright red WSU basketball shorts, a jaunty shirt, my new sketcher slip-ons, put on my bright blue life jacket and walked down to the lake’s edge where my small Livingston dinghy was waiting upside down on the shore.
These eight-foot dinghies are thick and heavy, twin hulled and designed to stay upright and sustain no damage as drunken yachtsmen careen off piers, rocks, and each other as they return to their anchored boats from the Barnacle Lounge after closing time.
First, I needed to get the boat right side up. The boat rested top down on a rocky bank with the bow on the uphill side. At first, I thought to flip the boat side to side, but realized that without a second person to help, the hull would fall onto the granite rocks damaging the gel coat. I saw that if instead I lifted the bow to flip it over, the hull would simply fall into the water right side up without damage. I could then step in with the oars and be on my way to the irrigation intake pipe.
Note to students in high school physics: The following is an excellent example of the law of conservation of angular momentum. The potential energy I put in the hull as I lifted the bow was converted into momentum as the hull fell into the water. Hitting the water stopped all that. Where did the momentum go? Perhaps if I had listened to Mr. Beck my physics teacher instead of staring at Katie V.’s long hair in the second row, the bad outcome that follows might have been prevented.
The center of gravity of the boat shifted toward the water and it fell at twenty-two feet per second squared. It hit with a splash, a bang, and shot out into the middle of the lake at 1.34 times the square root of the waterline. (3.16 X 1.34 = 4.24 kts.)
Now, things in motion stay in motion unless something interferes, and because the undamaged gel coat on the hulls offered little friction to the water, the dinghy was well out into the lake before it coasted to a stop.
Now what? Multiple choice:
- Swim after the boat
- Wait for the wind to blow it ashore
- Put the oars away
In retrospect, the correct answer was A. But at the time there was a gentle SE wind blowing and the boat was already starting to spin and slowly drift downwind toward Guk Bay at the west end of the lake.
A camper fisherperson prepares to lose all his lures in Guk Bay.
I kept an eye on the boat while scrambling through the bushes on my side of the bay. Suddenly the boat stopped in the middle of the bay. Looking at the other shore, I saw the butt end of a snag on the shore even with the boat. I realized that the boat had hung up on the branches of a submerged tree. Now what?
Multiple Choice:
[ ] Swim to the boat from my side.
[ ] Swim to the boat from the other side.
[ ] Stand on a stump and sing a foolish song.
Because swimming from my side had the probability of getting hung up in the hidden branches at the top of the tree, I chose to walk to the end of the bay and cross to the other side on the top of the dam. After walking up the service road for a short distance, I could then cut into the jungle on the other side and make for the end of the snag. I reasoned that I could walk along the top of the sunken trunk and reach the boat without much difficulty and little or no swimming. Reaching the point at which the jungle seemed a bit less dense, I plunged in. I was instantly entangled in spikey vines and had to pause to locate an alder stick I could use to more or less clear a path. Due to various crisscrossed trunks, a straight path was impossible but with the help of my stick I was able to get to the snag with only a few bloody cuts on my legs and arms.
Now, to the boat! She sat there, some forty feet away, mocking me with the Livingston motto, Safety, Stability, and Comfort just visible on her side.
The character of these anerobic ponds is a steadily increasing density of matter as one gets deeper into the water. Imagine a solid bottom some six feet below the surface, and clear water on the top. Now imagine, not layers, but a smooth and steady increase in organic material as one gets deeper. About five feet down, the density reaches the definition of guk, a thick glue-like mud, infused with rotted and still decomposing organic material of uncertain origin.
I cautiously started down the log, probing with my stick, but not able to reach it to the bottom. On the fourth step I slipped off the log and my right foot plunged deep into the guk. Now, as any former child who has messed about in guk remembers, if one just pulls one’s foot out the entire weight of all the water will hold the shoe in place, and no amount of searching in the guk with foot or hand will locate the errant shoe. One finds he is reduced to walking home in a muddy sock anticipating the wrath of Mom who, due to her deficient education in such matters, cannot understand how the shoe was lost.
Fortunately, in my youth, I earned the scouting merit badge simply known as Stick. This badge is arguably the oldest merit badge, although some, noting the lack of physical evidence, claim that Rock is the first. I personally agree with the proponents of Stick as the eldest because of the theory of parallel evolution. Studies show that our fellow Primates and Corvidae are quite facile with sticks while their skill with rocks is at best rudimentary. Regardless, there is agreement that these badges predate the Eagle Rank and come from the days when Pterodactyl was the highest achievement for a scout.
Applying my skills, I ran my stick down to the right shoe mired in the guk and carefully holding it in place slowly removed my foot from the shoe. Keeping the stick in my left hand, I unfastened my life jacket and shrugged it off my right shoulder. Then eyes closed and plunging in, I worked my way down the stick until I could reach the shoe. As students of pressure can tell you, the trick is to lift one edge just enough to allow water to get under the sole. At that point, the pressure is equalized, and the shoe comes up easily. Something brushed my head and face as I surfaced, which turned out to be the front half of a bass which had perished a good time ago in the anerobic conditions of Guk Bay.
Already soaked, there was no need to keep my head out of the water and so after putting my life jacket back on, I floated and got my sketcher back on my foot. I then struck out for the dinghy. Using my stick, I was able to push it free from the branches and then follow it downwind until it made true landfall on the edge of the dam. After retrieving the oars, my stick and I were in the boat, the oars unshipped, and we were rowing smartly back out of Guk Bay and toward the irrigation intake.
Suddenly, my odor aura of guk was overcome. Coppertone, and on a warm body too. Yes, I was struck with the unmistakable smell of suntan oil. I looked over my shoulder, and there she was: A twenty-something on a paddleboard, the full expression of the adult Coppertone Girl. I instantly knew stick was not going to help me.
“Your right leg is covered with mud and is bleeding, did you know? And there seems to be something like fish scales on your face. You should probably get cleaned up and put on some Bacitracin on your leg. Nice life jacket.”
Then the wind shifted and with a wrinkled nose, she quickly paddled away and out of my life forever.
I kept on and completed the intake maintenance and after putting away the Livingston and oars. I indeed followed the advice of Coppertone Aphrodite and took a hot shower, scrubbing the guk out of my hair, off my face and slathering my cuts with antibacterial ointment. I put on some nice jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt, cracked a beer and turned on my local rock station. Of course, it was ZZ Top, “….girls go crazy for a sharp dressed man.”
Upper Left 