Geodes erode from the sedimentary rock along the banks and overhangs of the Lost River. Jim will paddle his canoe upstream. These days in late June are long and bright, and he will use all of this one.
This area of forested uplands and buried limestone is complicated. Ancient plutons of schist have heaved to the surface to open up the forest. They keep the trees apart. The big rocks grow warm beneath mid-day beams of sunlight. In these quiet places, Jim reads for hours, across many years, until, now, he is seventeen.
Jim will learn that these metamorphic rocks could have been formed inside the first sediments scoured by the first of Earth’s flowing water. Or, they could have been formed within the hollow pockets of extruding magma pushed through the first, thin and brittle crust to form on a newly cooling planet.
The geodes sprouting from the stream are round. Within their hollow circumference, primordial boiling groundwater has deposited minerals, which then slowly formed structures to become crystals. Jim will slice these in half on his father’s band saw. He will polish the cut edge and sell them in his roadside stand. It will be good money.
Jim will paddle slowly, alert to spherical, gravely forms. He will find two. He will gently tug them out. He will wash them and when they have stopped shedding gravel, he will carefully place them in his canoe among his scuba gear. Two will be enough. There is much else to do.
Hidden Paradise is a mile ahead. He paddles into the current.
Through the trees, all around, lakes are hiding. Before filling from springs or the water table, these were pits out of which the limestone walls of cities have been cut. At Hidden Paradise, years ago, they dug ten acres from a hillside to find their limestone, so that now three sides of the hill stand as tall cliffs. The pit has filled with thirty feet of water.
Above them on the plateau, the old man who owns these acres lives in his trailer. He collects three dollars a day from folks that park their campers next to the Lost River. At the north end of Hidden Paradise Lake, he collects one dollar from the occasional day-visitor who wants to climb down the quarried cliff to the hidden beach to sun and swim and to listen to the quiet squawk of their transistor radio.
The beach is a leftover shelf where the quarry-men shifted their crane to re-start the cut. The quarry is irregular. An arm of cliff extends along the west side of the beach to close it off.
Groundwater and rain and a spring have combined to fill the quarry. One side is open to the Lost River without a cliff face blocking. Sometimes during the storms of late fall or early spring, the swirling waters of the Lost River eddy into the lake to restock it with fingerlings.
Jim sees bass meditating in the shadows of cliffs. He has found the strap iron of many lost, rusting, lifting lugs lying forgotten on the bottom, a sparkling thirty feet below.
The Lost River comes within fifty feet of the flat southwest corner of the lake. From within the thin screen of trees, you can see the counterpointe of both the rushing water and the settled surface of the lake. Jim will pull his canoe ashore here. He will dive alone. He has done this many times. If he came in the front way, the old man would have asked a dollar. Jim knows that the man is too old to want to make the trip down the cliff to collect that dollar, and if that the old fellow had peered over the edge and found Jim’s regulator bubbles down below. No one comes the way that Jim has come.
There is much peace in the unvarying routine of diving. Such regular work can bring on waking dreams and upwelling visions. There is nothing new to see. He is doing this just to be doing it. He could have brought along his lift bag to raise, once again, the ancient motorcycle to the surface, but he is tired of doing that. It is the weightlessness, the hissing sound of the intake breath, and the racket of his exhaling bubbles. It is carefree spinning that he does, with summersaults to perform. That is all there is. These are the exponents of something larger. It is enough to be young and healthy. It is enough to have all day.
It has been coincidence that their schedules never aligned. Summer school in college is a lazy time, but there is still work to do. The sorority girls have brought their books down the cliff in backpacks, but they have hardly read them. The isolation has fueled their imaginations; and they have lain on their blankets, resting their cheeks on the backs of their hands, talking.
The visibility is thirty feet. The lake is thirty feet deep. This means that once Jim’s descent has cleared his bubbles, he can see the bottom. Kicking down to it is fun. Watching it rise up before him is magnificent. The underwater floor of the stone quarry is like the ruin of an ancient city toppled by a long forgotten earthquake and then covered by the sea. Great discarded blocks rest at angles to each other. The shadows between the stones are homes to lurking bass, which work their jaws and gills, and stare.
The stone cliff at the north end focuses through his facemask. As usual, Jim will surface there. He will rest his arms on the edge of the beach. He will lift his facemask up to his forehead. He will rest his chin on the backs of his hands and he will think. But not today.
This has been hidden. This, he has never known. What he will find here, few men have known, and fewer boys and none of those have found it here.
Here is a college tradition, spoken fondly of to pledges and to rushees. On the hottest summer days, for many years, this has always been the nude beach of Pi Chi Omega.
The bubbles start from hundreds of feet away, and move slowly. At a distance, their sounds merge with the countryside.
Each burst is a snapping of bubbles, then a long pause, then more. Their line is straight and it closes with the shoreline steadily.
The other girls gradually notice that the Pi Chi’s closest to the water are staring ahead intently. Soon, all are looking south in a steady, unbroken realization that soon a man or men will be at the shore. Then what? They refer to each other’s faces, but receive only shrugs of shoulders, flat smiles, and lifted brows in return.
Then the sound of bubbles is at the edge. The sound changes from glutinous snaps to the high hiss of exhaust, intake, and exhaust.
A pair of hands slap down over the rocky edge, a wet mop of brown hair is followed swiftly by forearms, elbows and a head. A mouth opens. A regulator drops out. The hands reach up to push the foggy facemask up off the eyes and nose and over the forehead.
There is blinking and a struggle to focus eyes. Finally, the look of surprise.
Both sides are frozen. Crafty eyes sweep the water. There are no more bubbles.
Two car-loads of sweating, bronzed co-eds now communicate the unspoken and the unthinkable—except that they all are thinking it—as they raise an earnest welcome. They haul him out and beach him like a seal pup.
It occurs to each that they might be in the clear if they make sure not to ask his age. He certainly looks twenty, or so, doesn’t he?
Tomorrow he will have a triumphant ache, but for now, young Jim is on an afternoon endorphin high as he works his way through the girls.
“Are you next?” He would ask.
“You’ve done me already! He’s lost track!”
“Typical man.”
“Love ’em and leave ‘em, huh Mister? Try me.”
A comet crosses many orbits; a lonely moon circles only one. Good luck and bad can fix you just the same. After today, this beach will always be empty. The sorority girls will find another hidden lake in the forest that has grown up to cover all the quarries.