Iyow - in your own words

My parents have a cabin in Canada. It sits by itself on a small, nameless island, near where the St. Mary’s River flows into the North Channel. This time of year, as I look out on the soot-black snow and those low winter clouds that smell like pollution – the way old curtains smell like cigarettes – I think of that cabin in Canada, with the sun pouring in and warm, pine-scrubbed wind rushing to fills its rooms. I think of the clear water down by the dock, and the place where I can wade into it, my bare feet gliding across the rocks one by one until there are no more rocks and I sink completely in and feel the shock of the cold biting through to my bones.

It takes about an hour to swim the full distance around the island, or maybe a little more if it’s windy. First I swim against the current, in the open waters on the south side of the island. The waves slap against my face and once in a while I gulp water instead of air and taste minerals and plants and fish. If I see a big wave coming soon enough, I dive into it and listen to the weird, underwater roar as the water rushes past my ears. I pretend I’ve fallen into the water from a great height, and that somewhere above people are looking after me, thinking that I cannot have survived the fall. I blow out the last of my breath and sink further down, not wanting to resurface; to disillusion them and begin the long, humiliating journey back.

I get tired quickly at first because I’m trying to move fast and stay high in the water, out of reach of things unseen in the green depths below. Lamprey eels, for example, have been known to mistake a human thigh for the white underbelly of a Lake Trout. When they strike it’s like being struck with a barbed arrow. There is no removing it without making a second wound far more grievous than the first.