The Things in a Writer’s Mind

Twenty-six years ago, I was on my honeymoon in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York State.

With 6.1 million acres, the Adirondacks comprise the largest park and the largest state-level protected area in the contiguous United States, and the largest National Historic Landmark (copied from Wikipedia, but it’s all true). This, not Manhattan ( 22.96 square miles ), is the true New York.

Lake Placid, where we honeymooned, has been the site of not one, but two Winter Olympics. The Adirondacks were also once the summer destination of such people as the Vanderbilts, Oppenheimers, Rockefellers and other wealthy folks who built their Great Camps looking to escape the heat of the cities.

Twenty-six years ago, my new husband and I did the same thing. So did a certain physician and his wife. I never learned their names, but I will never forget them. As we drove home on the serpentine roads, up hill and down, we passed lakes and small towns. When we came to White Lake, we stopped. The evening before, there had been a seaplane accident on the lake. The physician and his wife were both killed.

The plane was still in the lake. Suitcases had popped open, and the contents drifted on the water.  A straw sunhat with a gaily flowered band floated as if it had not a care in the world. That hat got to me in a way the other articles of clothing or the half-submerged plane did not. The doctor’s wife had planned to wear that hat while she puttered in her garden, while she relaxed on their boat, while she enjoyed cocktails on the porch with her neighbors. Now, it was just a piece of detritus bobbing in the ebb and flow of the waves.

Every once in a while, that memory comes back, sharp and poignant.

And that is one of things in this writer’s mind.