12/1/97 .. Skim ice.

Despite all protests to the contrary, the Old Hag has been groping in our clothes. Raw winds east and north. Thanksgiving week was mostly sunny, but cool enough for the snow to crust up, and slob ice is hissing back and forth on the tide. Winter is determined to set in early and stay for leftovers. Pass the cranberry sauce.

Yesterday was a Pet Day, however. Sunny, still, and barehanded.. for a while at least. Bob decided to haul his boats. About time. The night before ice had grabbed them and dragged his mooring downriver 50 yards or so.

Bob has his old sailboat and a fiberglass runabout rafted together, with a motley assortment of old iron sunk in the Cathance ooze for mooring. There's always a ravel of Irish Pennants streaming to leeward, or tangled up on his half-fastened cleats and chocks. But Bob is prone to overkill, and his lines are so thick.. more like hawsers really.. that a single strand tied down is probably enough.

I was down at the landing playing with Olympus when he hove into sight to begin the process around 10AM. Bob backed his tow truck down the icy ramp, and I helped him unhitch his trailer and cradle collage, fasten a gigantic chain to it and the tailgate, then roll the trailer down into the drink. Of course it was late on the tide. The trailer might just have gone in deep enough.. if it had rolled to the end of the chain. It didn't. We shrugged and moved on to stage two. Bob left the tow truck rumbling and fuming on the ramp. Once it's going, why risk it not starting again? He stuck a sheetrock bucket under the front end, to catch the oil dribbling out.

Fowler was out on the river, lacing an oak sapling he'd uprooted with his four-wheeler onto his buoy, so he could find it once the ice has made. He plans to cut a hole, and haul his mooring that way, rather then wrestle with it in his tiny pram. Fowler and I rowed out to Bob's rig to help him drag the whole works back upriver.

When we finally got Bob's Mariner sputtering, and his mooring line up and down, we discovered it was entangled with another one. Half-tide and flooding hard.. we fussed for a while, but in the end simply cast off and drifted down to the landing. By then there was a gaggle of onlookers by the ramp, ready to enjoy a late season goat-roping.

The whole crew laid hands on Bob's mast, and plucked it slicker than Thursday's bird. I grabbed the camera and managed to snag candids of this roughlooking outfit. Subjects enough for a month of paintings, if you wanted a rogues' gallery. Why do they give me a quizzical look when I break out the camera? Is it because I've turned so many of them into carved beasts?

It lacked two-three hours of highwater, and I went about my business, promising to be back for the next act. Yes, I do pretend to have a business. I wear essence du sawdust most days, and my shop lights are on until midnight. Like Ben Franklin pushing a barrow-load of paper through Philly at lunch-hour, my reputation is secure. We know that I'm really hunched over a PowerBase 240 abusing the Internet, when I should be turning treeflesh into personalized arcana. But enough secrets.

The tide was up to Bob's rear end when I got back, and a new audience had gathered. The sky was hazing over. I had my gloves back on. This is a full-keeled vessel, drawing 4 feet, so it has to sit squarely between the jackstands Bob has welded to his trailer frame, and the boat must be far enough forward for the stands to hold it upright.

The first step was to drag the trailer farther down the ramp, which was done by tying ropes to the jackstands.. all that showed above water.. and pulling from the embankments. Like all group games on the water, this was enthusiastically attempted without coordination, and the trailer was cocked round sideways just enough to make the exercise ALMOST impossible.

It's such fun to hang at the landing. There's a crossing of ley lines there, or something, resulting in more mechanical mischief per square yard than anywhere else in the county. In the good old days the place was called Freak Beach, or The Church Of The Holy Smoke, and maybe there's still something in the air there. It certainly brings out the fey in me, and I've been asked to kindly NOT help when some of my familiars are engaged in a goat-roping. Maybe it's just a boundary phenomenon. A place where flatlanders get their feet wet. That doesn't explain why us masterful salts tend to fall overboard here, though.

Or smash windshields. Early in my tenure as resident joker a bunch of us were "helping" Shorey launch the Ten of Pentacles, Nina's houseboat. He had his pickup buried to the hubs in the river, and I had clambered over the cab to do something with the winch. It was raining, if I remember, and I had my foul-weather gear and boots on. Climbing back over the cab I slipped, and sat down on the windshield. Ended up in the front seat. Shorey had the good humor to just laugh. He tends to wave me off when I offer help, though.

Then there was the time Bruce and Jimmy were putting in a new float and ramp they'd cobbled together. The ramp might have been a bit longer and heavier than the little float could support, and the fastenings might be too close to the shore side. Bruce and Jimmy were standing on the teetering float, discussing this, when I proposed a test. Before they could stop me I galloped down the ramp, and the float flipped completely upside down. We scrambled up the ramp. Since then Jimmy has watched me carefully around the landing, for the cheap entertainment.

But they forget. Last month, when Jimmy was hauling his big float onto a trailer, I jumped in to help at a crucial moment. I happened to have boots on, and nobody else did, so it made sense for me to wade out onto the trailer and pull the float up the last three feet. I was keeping the float balanced by throwing all my weight against a bridle as Jimmy drove his truck forward. Well, I was no competition for the float. As it came out of the water it tipped astern and flung me like a catapult. Half on, half off the trailer, it plugged the ramp quite nicely. Bruce and Jimmy nodded and said, "O yes. It is you, isn't it, Bryce?"

When Bob and I are together it's hard to know where to point a finger. That's why I love to give him a hand. With the tide topping out, he pushed the sailboat up to the cradle with his runabout, and the fun began. First it fetched up, then it slewed the trailer around, then we backed the truck half into the Cathance, then we tried a big come-along. We pulled with ropes and cables, pushed with motorboats, pondered and pontificated. The tide was falling steadily,and every try saw us backing farther and farther downslope, approaching the point of no return. The weather was turning sour, with heavy snow predicted.

When she was finally on the trailer, more or less, Bob started to drive up the ramp, and she breached like a sick whale, rolling sideways. WOAHWOAH. And we backed down again. And Again. On the edge of dark, with just enough water left to float her, we did get the beast aboard, skewed and listing, but good enough. A bit of prying and shoring, and some serious lacing, secured her to her cradle.

I offered to put the runabout back on a mooring, and drag Bob's skiff ashore, while he lumbered off up the Post Road. It would be too late to deal with another trip by the time he got home.

The river hadn't had all it's fun with me, though. Bob's motor gushes gas out the carburetor, and it's tricky to keep her going at low revs. I intended to tie him up to the wooden arm that I've got for a winter spar, but every time I rounded up on it a raft of ice would drift down, the hand would wave, and disappear. Between the Mariner coughing and dying, and the hand playing hide and seek, I made four passes before giving up.. with a laugh. Joke's on me.

I cast a noose around a balloon buoy and secured the runabout. Paddling Bob's homemade skiff ashore with his whittled paddle, I was reminded of the time we tried to prove iceout on April Fool's. Breaking my way through thickening patches of windowpane ice I was glad yachting has come to an end.

Almost. The lovely Lola was still swinging in the tide downriver, skim ice carving her wooden sides, as the dark came down. Clinton doesn't seem to care. It snowed in the night, and was coming down wet and heavy this morning. Enough to call school. Bob was down at the river first thing, to retrieve his runabout, which had dragged that mooring a ways. And Lola was gone. Sunk? Dragged? Broke free and drifted away? Who's to know? In the Christmas card flakeout nobody was about to launch a boat to go goose hunting.

It snowed all day today. Draping the trees with fat garlands of white. A pair of immature eagles perched in their dark plumage along the river looked immense in the snowfilled branches. The woods are all bending down in homage to a winter sky, and the big birds have come back upriver.