WHO GATHERS THINGS?

By Christopher Parker

My name is Marie Humund and I am a grandmother here in Montclair.  I was in Nature Guides many years ago.  And one day I became a friend with another, but different nature guide, a Lenape Indian who lived in my hometown of Lake Hopatcong.  This cold winter is reminding me of a story.  Let me tell it to you, though it begins in the summer.

                  *   *   *

 That summer in 1949 when the CrisCrafts were lofted in the boathouses and the lake sank to its lower levels for repair of the bulkheads, we started building the Scoot. 

Ah, the Scoot, that wooden iceboat we sealed with alkyds before we departed for school in September.  I first read about such transport, the February before, in 48.  A great article with illustrations for completion of this homemade ice sailing skater appeared in dad's Popular Mechanics.  And so not to panic my parents with a girl even thinking about such things, I put the magazine issue if my closet under my winter shoes. 

That year I earned money year-round with baby sitting and gardening.  I sold magazines for school fundraisers where I won prizes or cash.  I saved all the dough in a Marly Daihen savings bank I won by being the only caller to a Marley Daihen big band program on the local radio station WWBA.  I needed an antenna to receive that radio broadcast.  It wasn’t like today with cable, satellite radio and pod casting.    

Engineer, is how I thought of myself at that time.  I even engineered my childhood wealth, always trying for the prizes on cereals, magazines, school and radio or earning it with labor and good customer service. 

There were not as many investment possibilities in those days but when Gwendolyn's dad, our Nature Guides leader, suggested breeding fishing bait, earthworms, as an entrepreneurial project, I dropped in more money than any of the girls, and earned more as a result.  And when times changed, and things were for a while doing better on the lake I sold worms wholesale to local stores, saving retail time for my other jobs.

The Scoot was docked in the boathouse hanging from ropes.  That way I could paint the bottom, under its skates. 

October came and I dressed as a sailor for Halloween.  In the hills around Lake Hopatcong, there were a few houses for trick or treating.  Some boys had the gumption to walk into the Lenape reservation that was up there in the hills.  The Lenape people tended to stay by themselves.  And I do not think that Halloween was in their traditions.  So none of the Lenape children came out that day. 

By early December I could see that the lake was beginning to freeze.  But in the middle of the month, we had some warmer weather, so Lake Hopatcong was water again.

In January, though, the temperature dropped dramatically.  In fact, the whole lake seemed to freeze in one night.  That made black ice.  No bubbles, no snow, no frozen rain or sleet left of the surface because the only weather was very cold air.  

I asked dad if the lake was ready for my iceboat.  “Not yet,” he said.  “It has to be a bit thicker.  So to be safe give it another day.”

So I did.  And without asking I had the boat ready the next day.  Gwen came down to the boathouse to help me.   She had filled a lunch box with sandwiches and hot chocolate for us and we placed it under the bow of the boat, near where our feet would reach.  The idea was to keep our feet warmer near the hot cocoa.  Thinking about a temperature change like that I remembered that ice could melt too, in fact sometimes it would not freeze at all.  Or at least as much as we wanted it too.

“We call the Marine Police to find out where the dangerous areas are,” dad used to say.  “Dangerous because the ice remains thin in some places.”

Dad said that one weak spot was under the River Styx Bridge.  This, because cars traveled over the bridge. 

“A gentle vibration comes down the pilings,” dad would explain.  “These pilings supported the bridge over the water.  The pilings come into the water and rest on the bottom of the lake.  So when cars shake them, the water feels it and does not freeze as well.”

I knew that the water has to be still, to freeze completely to make black ice.

I was getting ready to walk back up to the house to call the Marine Police when Gwen asked, “Where are you going?  You don’t have to ask the police for permission to go out on your boat.  Beside, if you do that your parents may tell you not to go.  Beside, we might get warm weather again.  This could be our only chance to use your wonderful Scoot.”

          So we lowered the boat to the ice, raised its canvas sails and emerged from the boathouse.  The boys next door looked at our boat with open mouths of amazement.  And then the strong breeze took the sails.  Gwen and I were thrown back in our seats, which sunk into holes in the fuselage of the boat. 

Then we adjusted to the acceleration, sat up straight and tried to steer the boat, ducking to mainsail’s boom every time we came about.  That was sailor talk, which meant that the long pole that stretched out the sail had to twirl around as the wind and or our direction changed.

“Wow, we’re going fast,” said Gwen.  “Let’s go near Pirates Cove so we can see if any of our friends are on the ice in the skating area.”

So off towards the cove we sailed.  As we approached I could see that no one was out in this cold weather.  To get completely into Pirates Cove, you have to go under the River Styx Bridge.  And I knew better than to do that.  But the wind had a different opinion.  As the sun rose that morning, the wind changed direction and strength.

“Where are you going?” exclaimed Gwen.  “We can’t go under that bridge.  I don’t see black ice there, I see white ice!”

“No doubt that’s weak ice Gwen,” I said.  “I’ll try to come about.  Duck!”

We both ducked so quickly that the boat tilted, lifting two of the Scoot’s blades off the ice.  For that time, I could not steer.  In a second the bow of the boat struck one of the bridge pilings.  We bounced off out of control.  Then the boat stopped.

“What’s going on now?” asked Gwen.  Then I heard a crack.  We were on weak ice!

“Get off the boat,” I hollered. 

Gwen followed me off.  “Get away from me Gwen!” I said as we scurried feet slipping on white ice. 

“Why? This wasn’t my fault Marie!”

“Don’t take it personally,” I said.   “We need to separate our weight so we don’t put too much pressure on the surface.”

So back on the black ice we watched the sacred Scoot sink its nose under the white ice.   We thought about pulling the boat out.

The Scoot seemed stuck like a boot in a patch of mud, that if you lifted it, would be sucked into the wet muck and your foot would walk back bare.  We thought our whole bodies would go under the water if we tried to get the boat out.  And even though the water was low here, especially this year, we imagined leeches eating our legs.   Of course, there were no leeches in Lake Hopatcong.

Still, we feared pulling the fresh Scoot from its trap in the ice, seemingly sinking its bow spike, like a nose, deeper under the water trying to determine the flavor it detects in the blackness.  Inedible as an Atkins diet, our sandwiches washed themselves in the nose of the wet Scoot growing the outskirts of their rectangle Wonderbread crusts like those toy sponges that grow immensely bigger under water. 

So it was two losses we faced on the lake.  And like Parisians in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting we poised hands on hip, top teeth over bottom lip trying not to slip into the ice crack and confused about what to do.  Our attitudes were sinking too.  Then I thought I heard that "qua-llink-unce" sound you could only hear in black lake ice when someone walks on it about a quarter mile away.

It looked like a mile away but coming across the lake was one of the Lenapes.  These people were the original inhabitants of this Muskanetcong River and Lake Hopatcong.  You could even find arrowheads, strewn around the shoreline now and then.  I knew this person, probably a child, was a Lenape Indian by the way he or she walked: always secure even on black ice or the dark rock on a cliff. The Lenapes knew their walking.  Like gymnasts on parallel bars they poised on all otherwise slippery surfaces.  But a slippery surface is what the whole remaining tribe of Lenapes always seemed to be on, summer, winter, and spring.  They were always a different people, tied to their beliefs and faiths that were seeded in this place thousands of years ago.  And here we were now, for a measly, say two hundred years, filling up their fields and woods and streams with soccer games, summerhouses and drainage ditches.  Still, these are a people to respect for their unity and ways to solve problems. 

Oh, the Scoot sunk slowly, like a penny in a viscous fluid.  Still, down it went. 

"No doubt until all its inner air is spent," I moaned to Gwen.  "Then I'll loose the Scoot, like that teenage boy's pickup truck that he tried to drive across the lake in the winter of 1935.  Did you ever read that in the newspaper clipping in a display at the Lake Hopatcong Museum?  And if memory serves, that was right here too, under the River Styx Bridge!"

"The River Styx, so this is the place you go when you do the wrong thing, that you knew may not work,” Gwen preached to me. 

"Come on Gwen," I said, "I don't need any more ridicule with my boat in its morbid state." 

Just then one of our Wonder breads floated to the surface, still in its wax paper wrap.  I imagined me, the wonder girl, nothing but a wax mannequin in the town museum, with a plague that said "talented business girl and the sunken Scoot, still under the River Styx Bridge with a pick up truck."

 I looked back at the approaching Lenape and could see that it was my friend Netta.  My friend.  Well, at least we had a silent mutual respect since the days I used to see her at our school.  But she left, for a special school that all the Lenapes went to, which was run by the government.

She sure was silent.  I thought perhaps she only spoke Leni Lenape, but that was not true.  Mr. Shingas, my history teacher told us that Netta knew the Hopi language too, and that her great grandmother had been a Hopi, that the family met the Hopis at a big civil rights pow wow in Arizona in the eighteen hundreds.  Not only did she know Hopi, she could speak English very well too.

"Look," I said to Gwen, "Netta is here."

"Oh that weird kid?"  Gwen replied

"Don't say that, Gwen.  She is not weird.  She is very different, from a different culture that has been here longer that our ancestors.  We must be the weird ones here."

"Anyway," said Gwen, "we need help pulling this boat out of the water and maybe she can help."

"Netta can you help us?"  I asked. 

It was years later in high school that I learned about her full name Neta-wata-wes, which in Leni Lenape means Skilled Advisor.  And in fact she was.  So much so that after high school I heard she went onto Massachusetts Institute for Technology and now she is in Arizona helping part of her ancestry make better farms and build better buildings.

Anyway, in her manner, Netta silently said yes to me by lifting her eyes, tilting her head upwards and making a gentle smile.  I felt that she was confident about this job.  That she knew just what to do.

Hands on our shoulders, Netta brought us over to the pilings of the bridge upon which we could stand without danger of falling into the ice.  With a branch she grabbed one of the ropes from the slip, then another, then a third and handed us all a piece of rope.

"But Netta," exclaimed Gwen, "this is the wrong position.  If we pull these ropes we'll pull the boat further into the water!"

Opening those eyes even wider than they were, she told us that there was a trick here.

"What do we have to lose Gwen?"  I asked.  "If you have another idea now's the time.  In the meantime our sandwiches are coming up for air and my beautiful Scoot is skedaddling under the ice."

"OK, but I don't see how this will work."

We pulled the ropes.  There were about nine inches of space left of the bow of the boat before the water cascaded into the holes for seating.  Then it would absorb water fast enough to flick it all under the ice.  As we pulled the nose went in deeper.  First just an inch, and then we got the rhythm right.

"Gwen, do you feel what is happening here?"

"Yes I do."

Netta gave a half smile, looking up from here rope grip for a second.

There was enough air still in the fuselage to float to boat.  And as we pulled the boat further under water, the force worked in our favor and had the boat bounced out, just a bit. 

We let the boat bounce out.  Then when it reached its apogee, its highest point, we pulled it back down under again.  Each time the boat would bounce out faster and further.

"Marie" said Gwen.  "We'll have to be careful not to full the boat down so far the water goes in the seating holes."

"Yes." I gasped yanking the strong cord on my wet mittens, so much so that the pain was difficult on my cold palm.

Netta spoke up for the first time,  "One last pull so the boat travels in a keshkhane."

"I don't understand, Netta," I fearfully uttered.

"Oh, that means swift stream," Netta explained.

So our frozen limbs stressed and inched the rope along.  Then on Netta’s cry "wikwetung!" we released the rope. 

Sure enough the Scoot popped out its ice ditch like a champagne cork on New Year’s Eve.  My iceboat skated to safety.  Then kept on dancing like a hokey puck so that we all ran after the boat, skidding on the ice, laughing and squealing with the joy of victory.

We all pulled the Scoot to the boathouse.  There we suspended the little ship with a block and tackle letting the water that was not yet icicles drop like the tears of personal disappointment.  Perhaps the Scoot felt that way.  We didn’t.  We had a great journey with the iceboat, built a stronger friend ship with Netta.

Gwen and I went up to the house to warm ourselves by the fireplace.  Netta, not a socialite, did not come with us.  As we held our feet by the flame and sipped a warm drink we could see Netta from the bay window walking with the grace, alone on the ice back towards the shore to the hills and then the reservation.

Oh, coincidentally, I didn’t tell you that my name, Marie Humund, sounds like the Lenape words Ma-eh-hu-mund, which means One Who Gathers Things.  This seems a fairly accurate description of me, given my accumulations of money, Scoot equipment and now stories.  So you can call me by that name next time you see me around town: One Who Gathers Things. 

Explore this story for its everyday science.  Consider how important science is in our survival as a human family.  In a community of inquiry consider the some of the following questions:

• What is unethical in the story?
• Why?
• What is our responsibility to science?  To nature?
• What is scientific thinking?
• How are we scientists every day?
• What kind of knowing makes something a science?
• There are simple machines are they a science?
• Is there a simple science?
• How does science interact with nature?  Is science nature?  Do we really know or control a science?
• What responsibilities do we have when we explore science?
• Is science dangerous?  How and why?
• Why do some people seem “better” at science than others?
• Do we have to see, hear, feel, and taste to experiment or observe science?
• Is engineering a science?
• How is nature and engineer?
• What is energy? 
• How do we know when we have or use energy?

Consider the connections between art and science.

• Is there are in this story?
• Is science and art or does it use or require art?
• What kind of documentation do we need to explore science?
• Is are scientific documentation?

Consider cultural truth in science

• Is science universal to all cultures?
• Is science truth?
• Do we lie with science?
• If we have an incorrect hypothesis does our evidence lie?

When would we not be honest about science?

Consider the economy of science.

• Was there and economy of science in this story?
• Is economy a science?
• How is this used in our daily lives?
• Is the economy observable nature?

© 2013 by Christopher Parker