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B. B. White

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Elwyn Brooks White (r899-1985) is considcrcd one of Amcrica'j finest cssayists. For many ycars, White was a mcm-ber ofl^r Nm» Torker magazinc Staff and wrotełhc magazinc’s popular coiumn, “The TaJk of the Town." He also wrotc children’s books, including the classic Charlotte’s Web (1952), and was the coauthor with William Strunk, Jr., of the re-nowned guide for writers, The Elements of Style (1959). But most mcmorablc are the cssays White produccd during his fife — gems of darity, wit, and heartfclt cxpression. White’s contribution to literaturę earned him many awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal for Literaturę. The classic essay reprinted herc is taken from The Essays of E. B. White (1977).

Once Morę to tlie Lakę

One summer, along about 1904, my father rented a camp on 1 _; a lakc iii Maine and took us all thcrc for the month of August. We all got rirtgworm from somc kittens and had to rub Pond’s Ex-tract on our arms and legs night and morning, and my Father rollcd ovcr in a canoe with ali his clothes on; but outsidc of that tlić vacation was a succcss and from then on nonę of us evcr thought thcrc was any place in the world likc that lakc in Maine.

Wc returncd summer after summer—always on August 1 for one month. I havc sincc bccomc a salt-watcr man, but sometimes in

summer therc are days wlien the restlessness of the tides and the fcarful cold of the sca water and the inceśsant wind that blows across the afternoon and into the evcning make me wisli for the placidity of a lakę in the woods. A fcw weeks ago this feeling got so strong I bought myself a coupie of bass hooks and a spinner and returned to the lakc whcrc we used to go, for a week’s fishing and to revisit old haunts.

I took along my son, who had never had any fresh water up 2 his nose and who had seen Jily pads only from train Windows. On the journey over to the lakę I began to wonder what it would fce likc. I wondered how time would havc marred this unique, this holy spot—the covcs and streams, the hills that the sun set behind, the camps and the paths bchind the camps. I was sute that the tarred road would have found it out, and I wondered in what otlicr ways it would be dcsolatcd. It is strange how much you can remember about places likc that once you allow your mind to return into the groovcs that lead back. You remember one thing,

and that suddcnly reminds you of anothcr thing. I gucss I rc-mcmbcrcd clcarcst of all the early mornings, when the lakę was cool and motionlcss, rcmcmbcrcd how the bedroom smcllcd of the lumber it was madę of and of the wet woods whosc scent entered through the scrcen. The partitions in the camp wcrc thin and did not extcnd elear to the top of the rooms, and as I was always the first up I would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, kccping close along the shorc in the long shadows of the pines. I rcmcmbcrcd bcing vcry carcful ncver to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fcar of disturbing the stillncss of the cathcdral.

The lakę had ncvcr bcen what you would cali a wild lakc. . Thcrc were cottagcs sprinkJed around the shores, and it was in farming country although the shores of the lakę were quitc heav-ily wooded. Some of the cottagcs were owncd by ncarby farmers, and you would livc at the shorc and eat your meals at the farm-housc. That’s what our family did. But although it wasn’t wild, it was a fairly large and undisturbed lakc and thcrc were places in it that, to a child at least, seemed infinitcly rcmotc and primcval.

I was right about the tar: it Icd to within half a mile of the shorc. But when I got back thcrc, with my boy, and we scttlcd into a camp ncar a farmhousc and into the kind of summertime I

had known, I could tell that it was going to be pretty much the same as it had been beforc — I knew it, lying in bed the first morning, smclling the bedroom and hearing the boy sneak quictly out and go ofFalong the shorc in a boat. I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and thereforc, by simplc transposition, that I was my father. This sensation persisted, kept cropping up all the time we were there. It was not an cntircly new fecling, but in this setting it grew much stronger. I seemed to be Iiving a dual j cxistencc. I would be in the middle of some simplc act, I would be ] picking up a bait box or laying down a table fork, or I would be saying something, and suddcnly it would be not I but my father who was saying the words or making the gcsturc. It gavc mc a crccpy sensation.

We went fishing the first morning. I fclt the same damp moss covcring the worms in the bait can, and saw the dragonfiy alight on the tip of my rod as it hovered a fcw inches from the surfacc of the water. It was the arrival of this fiy that convinccd mc bcyond any doubt that evcrything was as it always had been, that the ycars were a mirage and that thcrc had been no ycars. The smali wavcs were the same, chucking the rowboat under the chin as we fished at anchor, and the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places, and under the fioorboards