Continued from part 1
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Here's what ended up happening. They got out of the car, put my bicycle in the back, with saddlebags and all. I got in the back of the squad car and they actually drove me back to the youth hostel. Embarrassing for a fifteen year old. But that wasn't the worst. As we pulled up the gravel drive to the hostel, the policemen thought it would give me a kick if they turned on the flashing light and the sirens, like maybe it would impress the other kids. We roared up the drive way, lights blazing, siren blaring, and every single person in that camp spilled outside and gathered around the car.
The biggest and blondest boy in my group chested up to me, grinning. In absolute bliss. "Half Pint! You got lost! You got lost! We're on Nantucket! It's an island! It isn't more than two miles wide at any one place! You got lost!??"
Retort, I needed a retort. "Whoa," I said.
I don't think this helps. I don't think it makes anything clearer, by way of an example. I'm up here in the wilderness. I'm trying to tell you how I might as well be on Mars. And what is that going to mean? There's no such thing as a street here. There are only roads. And they don't have names. If they do have a name, it is something like "Moose Point." But if someone asks me, where were you yesterday, and I say "Moose Point," they look completely blank, or say, "You mean Syler's ridge?"
I went fishing, of all things, the other day. This is something that normally I wouldn't voluntarily do. But I'm trying to be neighborly, make human connections, not hide when someone rings the doorbell. So when B said "Let's go smelting," I said sure, why not, sounds great. Smelting was almost a new word in my vocabulary. I had thought it was something to do with iron ore.
Anyway, when the time came we got into his pick-up truck and drove way the hell out somewhere. Along these "roads," which are not paved, by the way. B pointed out roadside attractions. "That's pulpwood," he said. Or, "there's an old foundation behind those trees."
But there's no address for smelts. And B didn't know exactly where they were. We stopped by some gully to ask a man who was wearing green coveralls and a trucker's cap on backwards, standing by the side of the road and doing something with a rope. A character I definitely would have speeded up to pass.
But B stopped, rolled down the window, and asked, "Are there smelts running around here?"
"Gear shift under tier axle steering rod belfry ocelot." The man replied.
"Oh, yeah..." replied B.
Auto mechanics. Car trouble. He has a problem with his car, I thought.
"Yont nor screen throttle bar schism."
"O.K., we'll try over there," said B. And we proceeded to the smelting grounds!
The way to catch smelts is to find a stream that runs down into the ocean. Then as they try to get upstream to spawn or whatever, you catch them. This must be done in complete darkness, straddling the stream, with a flashlight in one hand and a net in the other. Really, you don't even need the net. The poor, dumb animals are struggling out of the ocean, and then upstream, against the current, over stones, and really, by the time the flashlight shines on their silvery bodies, they just don't care any more. You can just pick them up in your hand.
But they know where to go. Which is more than I can say. I didn't even need to catch them. I certainly didn't want to eat them. It was enough for me just throwing a beam on them, and watching them go by. There's a good clue, there's a nice metaphor. Whoa.
I am lost! And I keep moving in order to stay lost!
- the end.
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