trail’s end
BOYHOOD, AIRBORNE
Y
ou waste no time getting started at the swimming hole. You strip down to your briefs and shimmy up the trunk of the sycamore that hovers over the
bank. Bark bites into your bare chest as you clamber higher, nose full of the lush woods around you. All you know is now. The tree, the rope, the water below.
The stillness and swelter have lulled you into a trance. The day has come to a standstill, as if it will never end, as if nothing will ever end, as if you have all the time in the world. You will be in the eighth grade for the rest of your life and everyone you know and love will live forever. You yank the rope back and hold tight, launching away
from the tree and into the air, heart thrumming in your ears. You swoop out high over the water, then, at peak ascent, you let go—look, Ma, no hands!—and leap, flinging yourself into flight. A second or two later, you drop, splash- ing feet-first into cool, welcoming water, sinking until your toes touch the chill, velvety mud. Then you spring to the surface, gasping for air. The sun refracts through droplets of water on your eyelashes, the world around you—woods, sky—a rainbow kaleidoscope. Whoa. You went a little wild at the swimming hole in Dunker- hook Park in the summer of 1966. You and your friends went airborne, competing to see who could swing highest, create the biggest splash. You made like Tarzan and your favorite American astronauts, freeing yourselves from terra firma, weightless in your defiance of gravity. You could have hurt yourself at the swimming hole of course. None of you ever bothered to measure how deep the water went until you decided to dive in. You could have snapped your ankles or cracked your skull. Someone could have drowned. But that never happened. You were all boys then, doing what boys do. You strayed away from the sidewalks toward the marsh, the railroad tracks, the swimming hole. You played with an abandon absolute and uncompromising,
64 · LAND&PEOPLE · FALL/WINTER 2013
strangers to danger, hurtling into swimming holes and playing chicken with trains. Your parents never knew about your escapades. You never told because no one else had to know. You were a 14-year-old boy, and nothing could ever hurt you. Never again can you recall behaving with quite that degree of abandon and spontaneity. To your surprise, you grew up. Soon enough, you would be 20 years old and later 30, and then in a blink you would arrive at 40 and 50, and before you knew it you’d be pushing 60. Whoa, indeed. Your hometown would change. One night the fire
department would burn down the old barn the next block over. A flood would wash out the stone bridge to Dunker- hook Park. Bulldozers would plow over some of the last traces of the rural. And you would change, too. The dead raccoon you found on the tracks one day taught you in no uncertain terms what a train could do. From then on you learned to be a little afraid. You learned responsibility. Your new- found caution coalesced into habit and you started to suffer from hardening of the attitudes. Before any deci- sion you weighed every variable, performing a risk-benefit analysis. Oh, you’ve swung on other ropes since then. Marriage. Children. Jobs. As an adult, you keep taking leaps of faith. And every once in a while, you still pull a little stunt.
You tiptoe along a curb as if balancing on a tightrope. You hop onto the back of a shopping cart and ride it down an empty aisle, or—if you’re feeling really acrobatic—you leapfrog over a parking meter. In those rare moments, you imagine yourself back in 1966, back with your friends, forever 14. You’re roaming free, a daredevil reborn. You’re airborne again.
bob brody, an executive and essayist, lives in new york city. a longer version of this piece originally appeared in the atlantic.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68