FIGHTING WORDS

      I’ve always liked the word “turtle.” Like “boing” or “scrotum” it seems innately comic. Today turtles, specifically painted turtles, are my companions; over the course of the afternoon I see hundreds of them. Almost despite myself, I’m getting to know their yellow and dark-green striped heads, the orange under their shells, the glistening water on those shells before they plop into the water. It’s a beautiful sight, but let’s face it: This marsh is not exactly pristine and in the black banks of muck I see tennis balls and beer bottles and, mysteriously, dozens of orange golf balls. When I finally emerge from the marsh, I pass a dock with a large American flag, unfurled for the coming holiday, and, next to the dock, a massive fire pit on the riverbank.

      It isn’t until mid-afternoon that I pass the first human being I’ve seen since leaving Dan this morning. This is an amazing fact considering I’ve been paddling through the suburban towns of Medfield, Millis, and Sherborn. It’s a guy about my age fishing under a bridge. He claims to have caught eighteen fish—most recently a catfish and a bass. The Charles, I know, used to be a dead place. “Dirty Water,” as the song went, so even the possibility that he has caught this many is reassuring. The guy asks me to look for a lure he lost downstream and I do after shouting goodbye.

      Late in the afternoon I see another kayaker. Strangely though, rather than a feeling of companionship, I experience a prickly irritation, something maybe not too dissimilar to the way the great blue heron feels upon seeing me. What is this guy doing on my river? Of course I shout hello but it might be more honest to emit a heron-like sproak! The moment passes soon enough, though, and I am alone again. I paddle below a railroad trestle, navigate a field of sunken logs, and enter the Rocky Narrows Reservation, where I will camp for the night. Rocky Narrows is conservation land, owned and protected by the Trustees of Reservations.

      I set up camp on a little ledge of grass a few feet above the river. Here the water pivots around my campsite and the little beach where I pull up the kayak. Nearby, a large willow kneels, dipping its hair in the river. Once I feel organized, I grab my pack and pull out a beer and a sandwich and sit with my legs hanging over the ledge to drink my beer and listen to the kissy noise of a chipmunk. A Baltimore oriole flashes by.

      After I finish the beer, I reach deep into my dry bag, uneasy about the shameful task I have to perform next. Dan and I have agreed that I will call him to fine tune the morning’s meeting, which means this is officially my first camping trip armed with a cell phone. But when I pull the phone out I discover that it is dead. Not just a little dead either—there is nothing that says “No Service” or “Dead Battery” or even “Alltell.” No, this is utter death. I shake it a little and push a few of the buttons in simian fashion and then think about slamming it on a rock or something. What follows is a strange moment of panic: egads, I’m disconnected. I can feel my mind beginning to obsess over the problem, and can imagine spending the next couple of hours trying to resuscitate the machine. Not wanting to go down that ugly route, I jam the phone back into the dry bag and open a second beer. To my surprise, it doesn’t take but a minute to move beyond the phone crisis. So strange that even just turning off a cell phone, or being unintentionally disconnected from one, is a step into a wilder world.

      I sip the beer and watch a long finger of light shaft down through the pines. It occurs to me that this would be a good spot to have sex if I were traveling with, say, my wife. I scribble down notes for an essay about wild sex in the wild—anything to help jazz up Nature’s dowdy reputation. Meanwhile, streaks of sunset bleed into the river as a beaver plows by, heading back upstream. A barred owl lets out a series of classic whoos. Solo camping can be both thrilling and terrifying. I remember the first time I spent a couple nights alone in California’s Lassen Park; I was sure the deer grazing outside the tent were killer bears. Over the years, I’ve become gradually less nervous. The woods behind me feel substantial and it seems I have the place to myself, at least until I hear a loud stomping and yelling coming down one of the paths. What enemy tribe is this? Three joggers and two dogs crash their way toward my campsite and suddenly my patch of wildness feels a little tamer. When they see my tent they grow quiet, and while they stop to let their dogs splash in the river I tell them about my trip. To my own surprise my voice sounds excited, almost overly so, and I realize I am already turning the day into a story.

      I have always enjoyed spending days alone—solo days carry a special thrill—but for me, as a writer and storyteller and human animal, there is something else going on during these trips. I am readying my narrative, preparing to tell someone, itching to recreate my day. Pity the poor innocent who is the first person I bump into after these trips—the unlucky woman, for instance, who sat next to me at the coffee shop counter in Chester after my trip into Lassen—who gets her ear talked off.

      I ask the runners how they happen to have come this far into the woods, and learn that I’m not quite as secluded as I hoped: there’s a trailhead and a road a couple of miles away. After they leave it quickly grows dark. I urinate around the camp’s perimeters to ward off other visitors and return to my ledge over the water, waiting for the moon, breathing in the slightly skunky smell of the river. I consider smoking the cigar I’ve stuffed in my dry pack, but when the moon doesn’t show up, I climb into my tent. The night is quiet enough, despite the steady highway howl in the background. I settle in my sleeping bag with a book and flashlight.