{"id":292,"date":"2019-02-20T11:15:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T16:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/?p=292"},"modified":"2019-02-20T11:28:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T16:28:47","slug":"reflecting-the-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/reflecting-the-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"REFLECTING THE LAKE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Donna Dufresne<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nlake glistens in the dark, reflecting the red beacon that guards Weir Hill from\nairplanes. There are small yellow lights from all the houses that have popped\nup like unwanted puffballs in what was once a wild and lonely shore, and that\nrose colored wash in the sky never grows dark anymore. It is unlikely that a\nnine-year-old could sleep out in the dewy grass and count falling stars the way\nwe used to do.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            When\nI was young the lake was black at night, the only reflection being the red\nbeacons from on top of the hills that surround Lake Cochicowick (meaning Great\nPond in Algonquian). The beacons have stood on those hills with their quaint\nnames reminiscent of early settlers for as long as I can remember, winking at\neach other in a secret code. They were installed by the airport and as far as I\nknow it\u2019s been a job well-done to this very day, as there has never been a\nplane crash in or around the lake. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder if anyone\neven remembers the names of those hills with their peculiar neighborhood\nhistories anymore. China Hill was the magical Roxaboxen behind my house,\ncarpeted in juniper rugs and blueberries with paths carved by Fred D.\nWhittier\u2019s cows a generation ago. Now it is carpeted in split-level houses \u2013\nthe first of many developments that started in the 1970\u2019s. It once fostered  sacred places such as The Grandfather Tree; The Lassie Trail; The Tarzan Swing and The Broken\nDown Tree, <\/em>and we all knew that if you dug a hole straight down you would\nend up in China. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there was Cow\nHill,  the best blueberry patch and the\nplace to go on July 4th<\/sup> to watch the fireworks at the stadium over\nin Lawrence.  My dad would collect all\nthe kids he could muster up in our rural little neighborhood and pile us in the\nback of the dump truck or his Bronco at sunset. After picking a pail of\nblueberries, we would spread out on the roofs and the hoods of cars and listen\nto the crowd cheer for each starburst of color that shot up through the sky.\nAlthough it was several miles away, we \nhad the best seat in town for the fireworks, and you could hear the\nvoices of the crowd echo across the lake as if those people were right next\ndoor.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Osgood Hill was\nnamed for Mr. Osgood whose mansion is now owned by Harvard University. It is\nthe estate where my great-grandfather Dunham started out as a stable boy and\nblacksmith and later became a chauffeur and auto mechanic. Grampy Dunham owned\na Stanley Steamer, one of the earliest automobiles, which is now in the trolley\nmuseum up in Kennebunk Maine. Weir Hill is the twin sister to Osgood Hill, and\nI can\u2019t recall where that name came from, although I have a vague memory of my\nbrother and his Explorer Club camping out up there, and having some kind of\ntrouble on skis that involved sprained ankles and frost bite.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            It\nis not a pleasant thing to revisit a childhood home. You reel from the way\nthings are and long for the way things were and you suddenly realize you are\none of those old people that used to make your eyes roll when they would go on\nabout the discomfort of change. I\u2019m not really all that old, but I sure do wish\nthe lake was more like the old friend I used to know and not all lit up like\nChristmas.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Back when night was truly night on the lake, you would see a solitary beam stroking the water from Mr. Bigelow\u2019s estate. My parents managed the estate farm and the market garden when they were first married. It\u2019s 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 \u2013 a discard from the attic.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The red airport beacons don\u2019t 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 \u2013 a series of pulsations and vibrations like the rumble of the looms which echoed across the lake from Steven\u2019s Mills and ferried me through my dreams and the undercurrent of my waking life.<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “REFLECTING THE LAKE”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paDBMs-4I","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}