REFLECTING THE LAKE

Donna Dufresne

            The lake glistens in the dark, reflecting the red beacon that guards Weir Hill from airplanes. There are small yellow lights from all the houses that have popped up like unwanted puffballs in what was once a wild and lonely shore, and that rose colored wash in the sky never grows dark anymore. It is unlikely that a nine-year-old could sleep out in the dewy grass and count falling stars the way we used to do.

            When I was young the lake was black at night, the only reflection being the red beacons from on top of the hills that surround Lake Cochicowick (meaning Great Pond in Algonquian). The beacons have stood on those hills with their quaint names reminiscent of early settlers for as long as I can remember, winking at each other in a secret code. They were installed by the airport and as far as I know it’s been a job well-done to this very day, as there has never been a plane crash in or around the lake.

I wonder if anyone even remembers the names of those hills with their peculiar neighborhood histories anymore. China Hill was the magical Roxaboxen behind my house, carpeted in juniper rugs and blueberries with paths carved by Fred D. Whittier’s cows a generation ago. Now it is carpeted in split-level houses – the first of many developments that started in the 1970’s. It once fostered  sacred places such as The Grandfather Tree; The Lassie Trail; The Tarzan Swing and The Broken Down Tree, and we all knew that if you dug a hole straight down you would end up in China.

Then there was Cow Hill,  the best blueberry patch and the place to go on July 4^th to watch the fireworks at the stadium over in Lawrence.  My dad would collect all the kids he could muster up in our rural little neighborhood and pile us in the back of the dump truck or his Bronco at sunset. After picking a pail of blueberries, we would spread out on the roofs and the hoods of cars and listen to the crowd cheer for each starburst of color that shot up through the sky. Although it was several miles away, we  had the best seat in town for the fireworks, and you could hear the voices of the crowd echo across the lake as if those people were right next door.

Osgood Hill was named for Mr. Osgood whose mansion is now owned by Harvard University. It is the estate where my great-grandfather Dunham started out as a stable boy and blacksmith and later became a chauffeur and auto mechanic. Grampy Dunham owned a Stanley Steamer, one of the earliest automobiles, which is now in the trolley museum up in Kennebunk Maine. Weir Hill is the twin sister to Osgood Hill, and I can’t recall where that name came from, although I have a vague memory of my brother and his Explorer Club camping out up there, and having some kind of trouble on skis that involved sprained ankles and frost bite.

            It is not a pleasant thing to revisit a childhood home. You reel from the way things are and long for the way things were and you suddenly realize you are one of those old people that used to make your eyes roll when they would go on about the discomfort of change. I’m not really all that old, but I sure do wish the lake was more like the old friend I used to know and not all lit up like Christmas.

            Back when night was truly night on the lake, you would see a solitary beam stroking the water from Mr. Bigelow’s estate. My parents managed the estate farm and the market garden when they were first married. It’s where they lived when my brother, Rich, was born. Their care-taker apartment was in the old stables. Mr. Bigelow died of a heart attack while hiking in the Alps before I was born, but I grew up feeling like I had always known him. I imagined him walking along the shore in his tweed jacket and his Sherlock Holmes pipe, dressed like a country gentleman. Had he not up and died, my mother had grand illusions that he may have sent my brother to college. I have a little black marble plant stand from that estate, which Mr. Bigelow had given to my mother – a discard from the attic.           

If you paddled a canoe on the lake and were caught after dark, you could use the Bigelow Estate and the Country Club as your guideposts and slip into Mr. Gould’s Cove to the left, although you could only count on the Country Club if there was a cocktail party and the place was all lit up. Otherwise, the shore was dark and wild with Brook School Academy, a private school, tucked away in the woods, and the deserted Champion Hall which used to be a Jesuit Retreat Center sheltered by giant fir trees. You could still find little meditation benches along that shore and the remnants of saints and fountains tucked away in the pines.

            The red airport beacons don’t blink anymore. Did I imagine that? Perhaps it is a childhood memory distorted by my own pulse. Life can be like that when you are young – a series of pulsations and vibrations like the rumble of the looms which echoed across the lake from Steven’s Mills and ferried me through my dreams and the undercurrent of my waking life.