July 15
July 15, 2020
Dear LGA,
This morning I sit on the porch on the East side of
Cleverdale, 402 miles and a world away from Baltimore, my home over the last
twenty years, wrestling with the pathos of how my “isolation place” in these
incredibly difficult times is also my image of Heaven. Buzz Lamb said to me
yesterday over coffee, “When I tell people where I’m from, I let them know that
making a phone call from Lake George to Heaven is a local call.” LGA members
know that he’s right, of course; as I write these words, the sun is burning
through the fog that’s shrouding Pilot Knob, casting crystals on the dappled
water in front of me. Belinda Carlisle sang the song years ago… it’s “heaven
right here on earth.”
But my present wrestling match, of course, involves the confluence
of this heavenly environment with the world and the myriad effects of COVID in
particular. Buzz and I had gotten together at The Waters Edge up in Bolton to
talk about another row I plan to take this summer, but our conversation naturally
turned to the here and now, to the pain and life-and-death realities dominating
the news and affecting millions of lives. Buzz had written stories about my earlier
rowing adventures from Troy to Baltimore and from Ontario to Cleverdale, but
those were undertaken in ‘normal’ times. Those tales were human interest
stories, light-hearted breaks from more serious news, an appropriate
colorization of life before everything changed.
But now? This
summer? Sitting with Buzz, I wondered how a retired teacher’s “row” could be of
any interest to anyone in times like these.
In fact, how self-absorbed might this adventure seem in the context of
all that is happening? One of my former
students put it well when he said, “OK, Mr. Frei, so, you’re looking to try to
make something good out of something stupid, right?” (To him, the idea of a 69
year-old rowing a boat for hundreds of miles captured the idea of “stupid” and
was, I think, conveyed with eloquent brevity.)
The truth is, I was planning to row anyway. I take these
trips every few years and now that I’m retired, on the back side of a cancer
scare in January and missing my mom who passed away so suddenly in February,
the idea of two weeks of rowing in relative isolation, of being able to reflect
and express my gratitude for life and love seems not only a luxury, but an
imperative. Especially now.
So the “something good,” the catalyst for this outreach, is
the LGA and Lake George. If I can incite pledges to the LGA in its mission to educate,
to steward, and to preserve, I’ll have done something good. I hope that you
will join me on this row, vicariously, of course, and add your support to the
vital work of the LGA.
The logistics are this: “One Lap Around” will take me from
Cleverdale to the Canadian border and back, one lap around Champlain and Lake
George – lovely inland waters more kind than the St Lawrence which beat me up
some years ago and less daunting than the salty seas between here and
Baltimore. I’ll not take any of this “heavenly trail” for granted, but I expect
the greater challenges and lessons of this row might be faced ashore. How will
people feel about a welcoming a stranger into their midst right now? How will
hospitality fare amid understandable caution, and even fear? Homer’s Odyssey featured the idea of an
obligatory hospitality to strangers as a recurring and reassuring theme, but
Odysseus faced a mere Cyclops, for example, not a COVID-conscious environment.
But this is not about speed, or distance. It’s about
gratitude, hope, and community. It’s about paying it forward.
Peace, love, and happiness…and good health,
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