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Lake Jocassee 2020

Friday 7 August 2020

To say we’re creatures of habit is an understatement. Every time we go to Polska, we end up going to Zab roughly the same time. And here we have two years ago another trip to Lake Jocassee.

Lake Jocassee, Day 1

And then within another day, last year’s trip:

Lake Jocassee 2019

Each trip a little different. 2018 was our last family camping adventure at Jocassee. Last year we went without K as she was preparing for the real estate exam; this year, she’s so busy with said real estate that she sent me with E and his friend N. Other considerations, of course, but that was the main issue.

We arrived Wednesday evening and quickly set up camp before heading out to the lake. E wanted to show N the little “private” beach (which is not very private but is in fact limited to park campers only). It was here that we’d caught so many little minnows, and E was eager to show him how to catch them. Yet things had changed: the log from which we’d fished and around which all the minnows swam had lost all its branches and was thus no longer so inviting got the minnows.

Day two — our only full day — began with some fishing. We went to another location and immediately caught a few little fellows. The boys even managed to remove the hook and release the fish with little to no help from me. After a snack, the wanted to go back for some swimming. After lunch, they wanted to go back for more swimming. After dinner, they wanted to go back for more fishing. We basically spent the day on that little outcropping of rocks.

And today, pretty much the same.

Day 59: Morning Work Hooks the Companion

Wednesday 13 May 2020

Morning Work

Since I didn’t have much to do for school this morning, I took over the first part of E’s homeschooling adventure. Our first task: to write the first chapter or two of his book about frogs and toads. Six chapters will constitute the final product:

  1. Introduction
  2. Toads
  3. Frogs
  4. Similarities
  5. Differences
  6. Dedication

As we read, I saw the difficulties and frustrations lying ahead: when it would come time to write the book, he might fuss, “Now we’ll have to go back through the text again. We have to read it again!!” So I taught him a little trick as we read that I use with my students.

“As you’re re-reading, highlight facts you might want to rewrite in your own writing. Then put a number beside it to indicate which chapter you’ll use it in. When it comes time to write, then, you’ll just have to look at all the numbers for the chapter you happen to be working on.”

There are two reasons for this: first, it will help him with his writing later. That’s the most obvious way it assists him. Less obvious but more importantly, it helps him develop skills as a critical, analytic reader. My own students often have difficulty reading because they’re not reading for a particular reason. Giving kids a purpose as they read gives them a goal and a metric to measure comprehension and success.

As we read, E grew more confident about the whole process; as he began writing the first chapters, he realized the sense behind it all. That might lead to a little less fussing as he continues to work on the piece.

Hook

Mr. F, our neighbor, is a keen fisherman. He’s got a boat, countless rods and reels, and multiple tackle boxes filled with endless lures and hooks. Heading out to the lake regularly, he often comes home with enough fish for his family and some neighbors: he’s given us many, many pounds of fish over the year. He’s the type of fisherman that, as regards fishing equipment, if he doesn’t have it, it probably doesn’t exist.

The Boy often goes over to help Mr. F. He’s something of a third grandfather to E, which makes him really like a second grandfather since Dziadek passed before E was a year old and E knows him only from pictures.

When E and I discovered in the creek that runs behind our house a couple of pools that are deep enough for larger minnows — some looking to be three or more inches long, maybe even four inches long — I commented that they’re almost big enough actually to use a hook and bait. Recalling the little minnows we caught in Lake Jocassee with just a line, a hook, and some bread, I suggested that we could use a bamboo cane and make a real, old-fashioned playin’-hooky-to-go-fishin’ cane fishing pole.

After we were both done with school, we headed down, saw and net in hand. “I still want to try to net some minnow,” he explained. We found an adequately small cane and cut it after a bit of unsuccessfully netting attempts.

“Now we just need the line and a hook,” the Boy said as we headed back, adding as a sad afterthought, “but we don’t have any.”

“Why not ask Mr. F?” I suggested.

“Oh yeah!”

Then the real question as far as I was concerned: with Mr. F not out, he would have to go knock on the neighbors’ door, and I decided it was something he was going to have to do by himself. Would he do it?

“Just go knock on their door,” I said after he protested that Mr. F wasn’t outside at that moment.

“What if Mrs. P answers the door?”

“Just tell her that you have a favor to ask of Mr. F.”

He paused in thought. “Okay.”

When he came back, the Girl had joined us and was snooping about to figure out what was up. I explained. “Oh.” No protests about how awfully cruel it would be to catch a minnow with a hook. “With a hook!? Jabbed in its mouth?!” I could just hear her indignantly and incredulously asking.

When the Boy headed down for some fishing, I suggested that L might want to go with him. “Don’t let her talk you into letting her have the first turn because she will try to bamboozle you,” I warned.

He headed down by himself, though. I thought for a while that I should go with him at least to memorialize the moment photographically. Then I thought better of it: he needs some independence, and since he didn’t even ask me (with the explanation of being scared or worried about this or that) to go with him, I stayed behind.

He came back up a few minutes later, a scowl on his face as he stomped up the hill.

“Guess what?” he began, not waiting for a response. “I had one or two good tries and then the hook got stuck. When I tried to pull it out, the hook came off!” He plopped in a chair. “Now I can’t fish at all today!”

“Sounds like we might need to go get our own hooks,” I suggested.

More incredulity: “At the store?!” E is the most worried about cornavirus in our family. I think he’s convinced, despite our efforts to explain everything, that one can just get it, that it just lurks in the air waiting for unsuspecting victims.

In the end, we didn’t have to go get more hooks: the Boy remembered he had one small hook still on his fishing pole, so we cut it off and tied it onto the cane pole. We took some bread from a dinner roll we had, rolled it back into dough, and put it on the hook.

Soon enough, we had a minnow.

But our catch-and-release plan was thwarted by the difficulty of removing a hook from such a small fish. In the end, something terribly traumatic happened to the poor fish as we were removing the hook, and it went belly up immediately upon release.

The Companion

Clover has become a companion dog. She doesn’t wander around, looking to find what she can get into. She doesn’t sneak off to try to get on the couch. She doesn’t (always) go off searching for a toy. She plops down next to someone and just relaxes. When we’re outside and L is, for instance, in our fort reading and Papa is on the deck listening to music (he’s become a real Spotify fiend), the pup moves from person to person, spending a little time by my side, a little time by Papa’s side, and a little time with L.

Another sign that she’s no longer a puppy.

Then she goes over to the fence just to antagonize the neighbors’ dog, so many not so much…

Convenient cane pole storage system

Lake Jocassee 2019

Thursday 8 August 2019

Just a little over a year ago, we went camping for the first time at Lake Jocassee — not our first visit, but our first time camping there — and we knew that we would have to go back. Again. And again. This year, we returned, taking our same camp site — our beloved Site 20 — and going to the same places, doing the same things. With one difference: K, finishing up a course, stayed home.

“I can study better for the final without you all anyway,” she rationalized, but of course we all wanted her to go with us as much as she wanted to be there.

Still, it created a new dynamic as I explored an adventure with the Boy and the Girl. There’s a difference in fun in threes that makes us rely on each other a little more and realize — for the millionth time — just how much K brings to our family.

For one thing, we’re much more relaxed about getting started in the morning. If it were not for K, I don’t think we’d get half the things done we usually get done. K is the early riser in the family, and even when we’re on vacation, she makes sure we’re up and eating at a decent out, out for our first adventure, ready for our second well before lunch. Without her, we managed breakfast by 9:00, usually making it to the water an hour later as we went to get ice for the cooler, to drop off the trash, and to accomplish various meaningless tasks.

Part of that might have been the inability to split tasks due to having only one adult present, but honestly, we just got up a lot later than we would have earlier.

It’s tempting to say that everything else was the same, but how could it be? Everyone’s a year older, a year wiser. The Boy made a friend and spend a good bit of time on his own with his friend J, in sight but most decidedly independent. The Girl floated out to an isolated area and lived in her own world at times. The Dog wanted — actually begged — to get in the water.

The next day was more of the same, but with a major change: the rock we discovered last year that was simply a lovely spot to go and watch the sunrise and do some fishing, became a jumping platform. The Girl, seeing me and others do it, leapt into the water without much hesitation at all. The Boy? Well, J his new friend was there, jumping off with abandon. The Boy didn’t wait: off he went after a quick check to make sure I was in the water to help him if needed.

Lake Jocassee, Day 3

Thursday 9 August 2018

I don’t remember how the idea came about, but somehow we got into our heads to get up in time to watch the sun rise over the lake. We knew that either the small beach or the rock (or both) would provide an excellent view, so we got up just as the sky was brightening and headed to the beach. L, deep asleep and unresponsive to most everything, stayed behind.

We first went to the beach, but that was a mistake: a small rise on the other side of the lake blocked the view of the sun breaking over the horizon so that by the time it was visible over the rise, it was relatively high in the sky. It took some work in Lightroom to make the shot look like a sunrise when in fact, it looked like this.

We decided that we should check out the rock outcropping with the idea that we might try again the next day. It was clearly the better location of the two.

The Boy was with us, but he wasn’t really interested in the sunrise. He wanted to fish. I’d mentioned the previous day that early morning efforts lead to greater fishing success, so when he heard us talking about going out to watch the sunrise, he was eager to take his fishing pole with him.

I talked him into heading out onto the rock outcropping and he cast his line. I positioned myself so the sun was just out of the frame and clicked off a picture. I didn’t really think anything of it, didn’t really think it would be an image of much more significance than all the other pictures I took, but when I got it home and in Lightroom, I had one of those rare experiences as an amateur photographer: I thought, “I took that picture?!”

Definitely, it’s in my top five all-time best pictures.

Morning we spent on the small beach. We weren’t the only ones with that idea, though.

That could have been a bad thing, but camping brings out a certain type of family, generally speaking, and we all were getting along famously soon enough. One of the families had small, child-size kayaks, and we asked if E could try it out.

He was instantly hooked. “We have to get one of these.”

He enjoyed kayaking with adults as well, but not nearly as much. That independence, once he got a taste of it, was incomparable.

Finally, as we were getting dinner ready, the Boy noticed a young man in a neighboring tent site.

“Mommy, can I go play with him? He looks bored.” We went over what he should say, had a little practice session with him (“Hi, my name is E. Would you like to play?”), and sent him on his way.

Lake Jocassee, Day 2

Wednesday 8 August 2018

The Boy and I began the second day with a walk while the girls took the kayak out for a spin. We followed various paths and made a couple of discoveries. First, there was a playground nearby. We never used it again. Second, there was an amazingly small beach just down the shore from the tent camping sites that promised a much lovelier swimming experience than the large public beach.

After lunch, we all headed to the beach, hoping to get the dog further into the water. K had the brilliant idea of simply holding Clover and walking her out to a deeper part of the lake. She stood there with the dog, constantly reassuring her that everything was okay, and then let her swim back to the shore. That seemed to be all it took because she was generally fine with the water after that. Generally.

In the afternoon, the Boy and I headed out in the canoe, where we made a second discovery: a large rock protruding from the shore was just on the other side of the campground.

In the evening we checked out the two discoveries with the girls. Everyone declared that we must never go back to the public beach again, and the Boy declared that the large rock would be a perfect spot for fishing. The large crowd of teenagers determined it was the perfect spot for tomfoolery, but that’s what teens do.