You have probably noticed that the lake is lower than normal. A lot lower than normal… unless this is January, in which case it's only a little below normal. (But I just checked, and it's not January. Oh well.)
If all goes as we're being told, before the end of the summer the lake will be lower than I've ever seen it. Which could be interesting; I've always found it hard to enjoy walking on the shoreline when there is a freezing wet wind in my face, which is usually the case whenever I walk along the shoreline when the lake is more than ten feet down. Oh sure, there's the occasional warmish winter day that makes you think that it's a nice day for a walk, but trust me; it's a trick.
Seeing the lake this low in the summer got me thinking about other summers when the water was much lower than normal. I seem to remember the lake being five feet down in early July way back in 1977; I remember jamming a stick deep into the mud on the day that the level hit 485, and telling myself that I could always use that stick as a reference point for lake levels. (Stupid kid, huh? But believe it or not, that stick stayed stuck in the mud for many, many years; close to two decades, maybe longer. Back then, they built sticks to last, I guess.)
Another thing I remember that summer is finding a slough that was absolutely crawling with Water Moccasins; to this day, that's the snakiest place I've ever been. It didn't have anything to do with the low water; I saw one there on the first day of summer, and kept seeing them for a few weeks… until the water began to drop below the "unseasonable" mark, actually. I know that most people wouldn't consider this a "cool" thing, any many would even consider it a memory worth repressing. But when you spend a great deal of your time looking for snakes, it's nice to know that there is a place you can go and you're all but guaranteed of seeing more than one… even if they're snakes that you aren't going to try to catch.
At 7:00 a.m. on July 7th, 1977, it was 77 degrees, and the humidity was 77 percent. All of those sevens were pretty cool… and they were the last thing that day that resembled cool. Before all was said and done, the temperature would reach 105, probably the hottest day I had experienced to that point. But that was just the hottest of many hot days that summer; at one point, Montgomery had something like 69 straight days with a high of at least 90, and the thermometer topped 100 more than a few times.
The event of that summer that had the most long-lasting impact on me was attending my cousin Steve's wedding in Michigan. I knew that it would be cooler up there; I didn't think that I'd step off the plane and into air that registered a balmy 24 degrees. I'm not a fan of sub-freezing temperatures anyway, especially not in the August of the hottest summer of my young life.
Other scenes from that summer float through my brain, unconnected to anything specific. (Hey, it was thirty years ago! I'm probably lucky that I can remember any of it at all.) For example, I remember sitting in the bow of my fishing boat on one of those 100-degree days, paddling around. Why? I don't remember why, but I do remember feeling the flesh on my legs sizzling against he dark green aluminum and the sweat pouring into my eyes, so I'm sure whatever I was doing was important.
My memories of another drought-ridden summer are better, even though 1986 wasn't exactly yesterday. That summer started a lot like this one, in that there was so little rain in the springtime that the lake never had the chance to fill.
I was in college then-- I was in college for most of the 1980s-- and since my religion forbade me from taking classes in the summer, I was just hanging out at the lake, waiting for the beginning of the Fall Quarter, fervently hoping that that day would never come. I had a lot of friends in school that summer, though, but fortunately for me-- and them-- they weren't at all opposed to driving down to the lake after a day of classes.
And so, that was the last summer that I skied almost every day. (Responsibility got in the way after that, though eventually monstrous wakes caused by too-big boats would be the culprit.) One particularly memorable day saw a dozen or more of us skiing almost non-stop; literally, the only times we shut the engine off were when we were re-fueling. When it finally got to dark to ski, we docked the boat and shut it down… and I'm sure that I heard the boat let out a very audible "Whew!"
That was the summer I learned to barefoot; my friend Darryl refused to stop trying until he got it, and I refused to let him be better than me at any water sport. It took a few weeks for us to finally get it, but it was a learning experience; we learned that barefoot wetsuits exist for a reason, that rolled-up blue jeans are a poor substitute for a real wetsuit, and that barefoot falls hurt. A lot. Even when you're wearing a barefoot wetsuit. But, we both learned how to barefoot, and by the end of the summer we were 'footing without falling, crossing the wakes, and even skiing on one foot.
One day, Darryl was skiing and I was driving, when I noticed something in the water that I'd never seen before. And since I had probably driven past that exact spot thousands of times, it's safe to say that it was something that had never been there before. But there it was: a tree. The top of a tree, actually, sticking a foot or so out of water that should have been forty feet deep.
A little investigation showed that the tree wasn't growing, it was anchored at the bottom, had a float at the top, and had been placed atop a shallow spot that I never knew existed. Well, it hadn't existed before then, because by that time the water was about eight feet lower than usual. And the shallow spot was still a good ten or twelve feet deep, though the tree did create something of a hazard.
So I tied a bright orange life preserver to the top of the tree so other boaters could see it… and life went on.
By the time the summer ended, our dock was sitting high and dry. But we were still using the boat every day; to get to it, we just had to wade out to where it was anchored. When I finally put the boat up at the end of September, it wasn't because of the low water; it was because, despite my hopes and wishes, school started back.
A funny thing happened during and after those summers: the world didn't come to an end. Shallow spots weren't covered with wrecked boats, boat storage sheds weren't full of boats that were covered with cobwebs, and the lake didn't turn into a ghost town. Yes, things were different; I guess lake people were different, too, because we looked at the low water and we dealt with it. I don't recall any whining, and only minimal adjustments, when needed.
Looking back, I'm glad I didn't let the low water interfere with my summers, because those were two great summers. But I have to wonder how many people are going to miss having great a great summer this year just because they're not going to get to have everything just the way they want it?