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I pulled up to the boathouse around eleven, the sun already fierce. I looked forward to getting on the water, hoping for a breeze. Luka and his tour group weren’t back yet, so I grabbed the waterproof rucksack with our lunch out of the van. Bless you, Sam! I retrieved a key we kept hidden under a loose piece of siding on the boathouse and undid the padlock. I found the same kayak I had used before and wrestled it off the hooks and outside, stowed the lunch and a canteen of water in the forward hatch. It didn’t take long for Luka and his morning tour to arrive.
A group of three young women called to one another, laughing as they paddled after Luka. As he sped up near the shore and slid smoothly onto the grass, the women watched his every move, eager students, ready to repeat the procedure. Luka pulled his boat aside then turned to assist his clients. He grabbed the bow handle as each boat approached, pulled it onto shore in a smooth motion, then assisted each woman—each young, fit, stunning woman—from their boats. They looked to be in their early twenties, and each one drop dead gorgeous in a roughing-it kind of way. Hair bleached by the sun or professionally made to look sun-kissed. Tan, healthy, smooth skin, and white teeth. They laughed and talked, and each gave Luka a post-tour hug. Then they had a group hug, laughing all the while.
Luka played along with them, flirting shamelessly, which precipitated an unpleasant ringing in my ears. What the heck? Was this jealousy? If so, of what? Their youthful beauty, their easy camaraderie, their fawning over Luka? Or Luka taking it all in like some gold-medal athlete used to being fussed over. I looked away and kicked the dirt, grateful when West pulled the van into the driveway to whisk the ladies back to the Ranch.
The ladies turned their attention and charm to West, clambering aboard the van, and waving goodbye to Luka.
And then we were left alone.
“Lunch is stowed in my kayak,” I prattled. “Do you have water? Do you need to, uh, freshen up before we go?”
“Ya, I have water, and give me a minute,” he disappeared behind the boathouse.
I closed my eyes and faced the sun. It felt delicious on my skin. I could have fallen asleep, breathing in the aroma of sun-warmed grass tempered with the humidity of the lake. When I opened my eyes, Luka was watching me from a couple of feet away, expression unreadable.
“Oh, sorry,” I started. “Ready?”
I clicked into my life jacket, pushed my kayak to the edge of the water and climbed in, pulling my paddle from beneath the straps on the boat where I had stored it. Luka gave me a push and the kayak bobbed on the water. I felt as buoyant and weightless as an astronaut on a space walk.
Luka climbed into his boat and eased silently into the lake.
We wound through the estuary, paddling gently alongside tall grasses. A couple of mallards meandered ahead of us before taking off with an indignant quacking as their wings pounded the water then lifted them aloft. The labyrinth wound a cozy path until it peeled away, and we paddled onto the broad expanse of the lake proper. The waters reflected a startingly blue sky, devoid of clouds except for a thin band of puffy cotton on the southern horizon.
Luka pulled up beside me and we fell into sync, kayaks slicing through the water like knives through flesh. I glanced at Luka’s chiseled arms, muscles flexing with each stroke. Despite the relentless sun, I shivered.
After about twenty minutes, my left shoulder began to ache—it had been a while since I’d kayaked for any length of time at a brisk pace. I knew I was holding Luka back. I’d seen him paddle—he could have made it in an hour or less. After a while, the ache in my shoulder faded as my second wind kicked in.
We glided alongside the Moore Point dock at three o’clock, later than I had planned. Luka slid out of his boat and onto the dock in one effortless motion. He lifted out his kayak, then reached down and pulled me up and out of my boat as if he were extracting a sliver. Once I was safely on solid ground, he lifted my kayak and placed it alongside his.
I rubbed my arms and swung them in circles, trying to get some feeling back.
“Your arms are sore?”
I nodded. “My left shoulder always gets tired fast, but then I get over it.”
“You must paddle from here.” He patted his abdomen. “Stabilize these muscles. The power comes from the body, not the arms. You engage the, what’s the English word, core, and push the paddle away from the body from here.” He patted a well-muscled shoulder. “You pull back with core, chest, back and arm muscles, like your upper body is a strong triangle. You see? That’s where the power comes from, so you don’t tire your arms. I should have taught you this before we left.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind on the way home.” I extracted the rucksack from my boat and held it aloft. “Lunch!” On shore, a large picnic table sat in a clearing fringed by pine trees. Nearby was a Park Service three-sided wood shelter built for campers.
Sam had packed sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, apples, and cookies.
We each took a slug from our canteens then sat opposite each other at the picnic table and unwrapped the food.
“Oh my gosh, look at these,” I said, lifting the top off a crusty baguette sandwich. “It looks like chicken.” I pinched a dark substance and tasted it. “Oh golly, it’s chicken with fig, cheese and spinach.” I beamed. “Sam has outdone himself.”
We ate, appreciating every bite of Sam’s creative sandwiches. “There used to be a hotel here, and a post office,” I said between bites.
“Here?” Luka looked around skeptically. “Out in the middle of nowhere?”
“Yup. Back in the early 1900s, this was a very popular tourist destination. There’s a picture in the Park Service Visitor’s Center. Ladies in long dresses holding the fish they’d caught on long stringers. The hotel burned down in the 1950s.”
As I polished off the last cookie crumb, the water had changed, morphing from dead calm to a restless lake.
Luka pointed over my shoulder to the southern sky. “I don’t like the looks of those clouds,” he said.
The innocent white puffs on the horizon had boiled up vertically and moved uplake at an alarming speed. An advance breeze grew stronger, urging the surface of the lake into inky peaks and valleys. In the distance, an opaque line stretched across the breadth of the lake. Beyond that, a band of fluid ebony.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
The swelling wind blew from the south. “Weather usually doesn’t move in from that direction,” I said with a hint of alarm. “We get our worst storms from there.”
We packed up our lunches, a little rushed as a dark wall of clouds crept ominously toward us.
We climbed back in our boats. Luka held mine as I slipped inside, and he gave me a push. He paddled next to me in no time.
At first, the wind at our back helped us make quick progress uplake. Then the atmosphere changed. The wind picked up speed and the temperature plummeted.
I had seen what this lake could do, usually from the safety of shore. Occasionally, from the deck of the Lady of the Lake. Flat as a mirror one minute, four-foot waves the next.
Nimbostratus clouds blotted out the sun; the swelling wind churned the lake into furrowed oil. Then it got worse. Although the wind still pushed at our backs, the bow of my kayak now had to fight its way through ocean-worthy waves. Something cold opened inside my chest. At first, I crested each wave. As they grew bigger, the water broke over the bow, soaking me and slowing progress to a crawl. Luka held back to stay abreast with my boat. I was slowing him down.
Thunder rumbled behind us. I turned to look as a black curtain closed in on us, a wall of rain churning the water into a crazy lather, still a mile behind us but approaching fast. The lake roiled furiously. I foolishly hoped we had a chance to make it back to Stehekin before it overtook us.
Then the world went black. I found myself completely submerged in the water, so sudden and unexpected that I gasped in surprise, sucking in water. Underwater, my thoughts were thick and slow. My legs, still stuck in the cockpit, jackhammered the shell of my overturned kayak. My life jacket lifted my upper body toward the surface, but nothing budged.
Some long-ago kayak training came back. I had to remain calm and execute a wet exit—so easy when you’re in a swimming pool, not so much in a menacing lake. I stilled my thrashing legs, grabbed the edges of the cockpit, gripped, and pushed. I slid out of the boat as slick as a seal, yet still completely submerged and in desperate need of air.
Fear wormed in my gut as I flailed in the water. What little air I had in my lungs ran out. Calm settled over me. This was it. Drowning in the lake I loved. Not a bad way to go. Not long and drawn out in hospital rooms. No crowded ER. No pain. Not yet, anyway.
My face broke free of the water, and I rose into the air like a movie played in reverse. Luka held the loop on my life jacket in one hand, suspending me in the air as he corralled my kayak with his other hand and righted it, all while leaning from his own boat. He hoisted me into my boat as if I were a sack of flour and planted me firmly in the cockpit. He peered at me intensely.
“Are you okay?”
I began to cough and gag, water spewing from somewhere deep inside. I retched into the water. After a long while, I gulped in a breath of air. I couldn’t talk but nodded. He made sure I was situated firmly in my boat, then took off. Another moment of panic struck me. Was he going to abandon me out here? Then I saw him pluck my paddle from the churning water where it had drifted and turn his boat back to me.
“I’m going to tie us together and tow you. All you must do is keep your boat straight behind me. Can you do that?”
Still coughing and gasping, I nodded.
He opened the hatch nearest him on his boat and pulled a rucksack. He rustled around in it until he pulled out a thin length of line. He stuffed the rucksack back into the hatch, secured the cover, then, bobbing like a cork, tied the rope to the handle on the front of my kayak to the handle on the back of his.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he shouted.
I finally stopped coughing. “Yes!” I screeched over the screaming wind.
He nodded once, then turned around and paddled. The waves and wind pushed my boat around, but I did my best to keep my kayak directly behind Luka’s, pointed straight at his rudder. My vision focused exclusively on the back of Luka’s kayak. The wind pushed my boat askance, but I pushed back, struggling to keep it straight.
We fell into a rhythm, driving the boats through the terrifying storm—Luka, a wonder to behold. He plowed through the waves as if piloting a motorboat. Water cascaded over his bow, but he never wavered. He paddled first on one side, then the other, keeping his boat heading straight, and we made progress uplake. Then the rain arrived, as if a celestial hand had just flipped on an enormous cold tap, gigantic drops plunking into the lake. Water danced all around us, the noise deafening. A flash of light, followed immediately by the visceral boom of thunder. And still, Luka bulldozed his way through the water, never wavering, never slowing, never stopping for a breather.
He. Just. Paddled.
So intent on my small task, I was caught by surprise when we passed the Flick Creek Cabin, less than a half mile down from Stehekin. Luka headed for the mouth of the estuary, and although the rain still pelted us, the waves slackened into gentle bumps, then finally broke apart as we wound our way back through the safety of the inlet to the boathouse landing.
Luka glided up onto the grassy shore, jumped out of his boat and reeled my boat by the rope onto shore.
We had survived.
He pulled me out of my kayak and, much to both our surprise, he pulled me into his arms and held me tight. For a long time. I gripped him as if he was the only solid thing on earth and I would fly away if he wasn’t grounding me. It felt good. Damn good.
At long last, he let me go and held me at arm’s length, leaning down to look me in the face. “You can breathe? You’re okay? No water in the lungs?”
“Yeah, I’m okay thanks to you. How did you do that? Paddle through those enormous waves as if they were nothing?”
He ran his fingers through his dark rust hair, tousling it into wet, messy peaks. After we both returned to normal breathing, he said, “I competed in a World Championship marathon race held in Gentofte, just north of Copenhagen on Bagsværd Lake. Every Danish lake I’ve ever been on was cold and windy, and Bagsværd was no exception. Rough water, brutal conditions. I practiced for months to get ready. At least today my fingers didn’t go numb from the cold.”
He hesitated. “I won that marathon, by the way.” He ducked his head, as if embarrassed that he had bragged. Then he grinned, looking boyish.
Had he smiled like this since I’d met him that first day on the dock? No, I would have remembered that smile.
I wanted to step back into his arms, to thank him for saving my life, for plucking me out of the water and powering our boats back to safety. But my clothes were soaked, and I felt chilled to the bone as a cold wind still blew. I shivered from head to toe.
Luka’s grin collapsed. “You need a hot bath. Let me get you back to the Ranch.”
He helped me into the van, tucked a blanket around me, studying me the whole time as if to make sure I wouldn’t die on his watch. He started the van and turned the heat on high.
When we arrived, he walked me to the main building, one arm around me as I held the blanket tightly, still shivering, probably more from shock now than cold.
Kathy looked up from behind the desk, blue eyes going wide. “What in heaven’s name?”
“We were kayaking downlake when the storm hit,” Luka explained calmly. “Her boat capsized. She needs to warm up.”
Kathy skirted the desk and pulled me out of Luka’s grasp. I instantly missed the feel of him, the safety of his arms.
“Come on, let’s get you into a hot bath,” Kathy said. “We’ll go to my room. I’m the only one around here with a tub.”
She whisked me away as if I were a child.
