One weekend a lifetime ago, dad took us up to a place called Nancy Lake, about ninety minutes north of Anchorage, Alaska. We had a fourteen-foot camper, some fishing gear, and little else. Back then, as kids, we didn’t need anything else. We made our own adventure.
With the smoke of campfires hanging in the air, my brother, Roger, and I set out exploring along the lake shore. About a hundred yards along we came upon a sheet of plywood attached to a couple of planks just by the water. “Wow! A raft!” I said.
Roger grunted and gave me a funny look, but after a moment his expression changed to excitement. “I bet you could paddle out a ways and see if there are any fish.”
I smiled.
“Let’s get the mask,” he said. We first used the diving mask in Ship Creek, in Anchorage, when a king salmon swam into a deep hole with the last of our tackle – two Coho flies. Dad wasn’t coming for us for another three hours, so we figured why not go in after it?
I donned the mask we’d retrieved from the camper and waded into the clear brown water. The warm layer of water near the surface felt good, but I hesitated, trying to get used to the frigid layer a few inches below.
“Well, go on,” Roger said. “Don’t be chicken!”
“I’m not chicken!” I took a deep breath and plunged into the water and instantly started splashing around breathlessly.
Roger laughed and man-handled the plywood junk into the water.
It was no raft, though. Just leaning on it a little made the edge dip under the surface, but I discovered that when I laid with it held out in front of me I could keep my head above water. I began kicking with all the power I could.
Roger yelled for me to stop when I’d reached about fifty feet from shore. “Put your head under and see if there’re any fish,” he shouted.
I gave him a quick and clumsy thumbs up and put my face under water.
Instantly I popped up thrashing and screaming, “Help! HELP!!!”
“What’s the matter?” Roger yelled, leaning over and pulling at one of his shoes. He was getting ready to dive in after me, to rescue me just like he’d done in West Virginia a few years before when I got stuck on an icy slope, and Bethesda a couple of years before that when he pulled me in from the ledge of our seventh floor apartment.
I calmed down enough to yell back, “I’m okay.” I got the plywood raft turned around, but I had almost no strength left to heave it.
“What are you doing?” Roger yelled. “Leave it and swim to me!”
I got back to shore gasping for breath.
“What happened?” He said, handing me my tee shirt
“I saw a skeleton! A SKELETON!!” I said, pointing. I decided not to tell him I thought it was going to reach up, grab my ankle and drag me down to the bottom, though.
Roger headed for the camper and told Mom and Dad what had happened. They told a Fish and Game officer who shrugged, smiled, eyed me suspiciously, and offered, “If it was anything, it was most likely a moose.”
“You okay?” Roger asked me.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m cool, thanks.”
“Hey man,” he smiled. “That’s what big brothers are for.”
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