“I’m just now passing Split Rock,” I tell Susan while sailing north toward home. Or when heading to Point Bay Marina for refueling after a wakesurf or waterski session in Whallons Bay. Or when skating south on the frozen lake…
Our Rosslyn lifestyle has been informed by the moods, temperament, activities, topography, and breathtaking beauty of Lake Champlain. With so much of our lake life revolving around swimming, boating, and watersports, Split Rock is a familiar geographical backdrop, navigational point of reference, and storytelling subject. Oh, and catching an Adirondack sunset from a boat in mid-lake as the glowing orb settles into the split? Perfection!
Probably 100 years ago or so this color retouched photograph of a steamship passing Split Rock lighthouse became a postcard, a microscopic meme for the less rhizomic pre-internet age. An image/idea duplicated manifold and conveyed across large distances to communicate sentiment and elicit reactions. A provocative posting reconnecting geographically dispersed family or friends. So many sentiments inked into surreal facsimile, personalized with a few sentences, mailed for next to nothing.
Perchance poetry can gather the fraying threads of this post?
Passing Split Rock
Steamer Vermont passing
Split Rock lighthouse…
patinaed postcard
caption, all caps.
So many steamers —
from early 1800s
through early 1900s —
plying port-to-port,
traversing Champlain’s
ancestral lands of
Abenaki, Algonquin, Mohawk.
Indigenous forebears
across millennia
hailed this landmark,
learned from this lookout.
Navies and militias,
maritime merchants,
pirates and sports,
and even perhaps one
mythical monster
have navigated with
benefit and bearings
of Split Rock Point.
A muffled mess, I’m afraid. But tired, I tip this over the transom to bob in my wake. Good night.
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