Safely Ashore – Terrain.org

April 18, 2021

In November 2020, B.J. Hollars answered a call from his father-in-law while teaching. “When will you be home?” Steve asked. “I have news.”

So began the Hollars family’s year of plenty—a cancer diagnosis on top of the ongoing COVID pandemic, then feelings of falling short as parents, partners, and people. While Hollars traces his family’s daily devastations alongside his father-in-law’s decline, he recounts the small mercies along the way: birthdays, campfires, fishing trips, and kayaking. As he, his wife, Meredith, and their three young children grapple with how best to say goodbye to the person they love, they are forced to reassess their own lives. How can we make the most of our time, they wonder, when time feels so short?

In this excerpt, a violent encounter in the natural world reflects the author’s helplessness amid his father-in-law’s declining health, begging the question: To what extent should we intervene to subvert nature’s best-laid plans?

 
For the first 15 minutes, we don’t make it 20 feet from the shoreline.  

“What if we try this,” I say, pulling Ellie’s six-year-old frame closer to me in the kayak. “Now sit tight. Let me do the paddling for a while.” 

I drape my arms around her to find momentum on this glassy, oxbow lake. Yet so far, momentum eludes us. We are two people with two paddles in one kayak, yet the mechanics don’t align. My paddling offsets her paddling, and hers offsets mine. And so, we spin and spin and travel nowhere. 

At last, Ellie allows the paddle to go limp in her hands, resigning herself to letting Dad do the work. It is not her preference. For her, self-reliance is a survival tactic—one she’s acquired in her role as the middle child.  

I dip the paddle off the right side, trying to manage something resembling a rhythm. Due to our sloppy start, the water now puddles in the kayak’s crevices. Where our feet should be, and our legs, and our backsides, all we feel is water. Still, we are in good spirits. And wide awake thanks to the morning sun sprawling across the lake’s surface. 

Seated now with nothing to do, Ellie fits her eyes into my binoculars. She adjusts the focus wheel to spot a pair of Canada geese appearing crisply through the lens. Even at 100 feet, the birds are bigger than I expect.  

They collide with the water with such a stunning lack of grace that I question natural selection. I wonder if they think the same about our kayaking skills.  

Ellie turns toward me, whipping my face with her half-ton of curls. 

“Dad!” she says. “Look!”

“I know!” I say. “I see them!” 

For ten seconds, we watch the geese shake the water from their dirt-encrusted feathers. I give chase as inconspicuously as I can, angling the kayak slightly—but not directly—toward them.  

I keep my gaze askance as if to say: Nothing to see here. Just two people in a kayak minding their own business… 

But we are not. Instead, we embroil ourselves in their drama. 

Stiffening their necks, the geese swim toward the bay’s entrance. We follow close behind, gliding into the narrow waterway which widens around the bend. The red-winged blackbirds shriek at full volume—conk-la-ree—droning out the sound of our paddling. We are invisible, or so we think, and steady ourselves behind a patch of bramble.  

Had we seen the geese from the shoreline, they might not have registered. But joining them on the water feels different. As if we could no longer be observers, even if we wanted. 

From overhead, two additional geese clatter into the water. They are as inelegant as their brethren. They greet one another with frantic honking, torpedoing toward their doppelgangers in the water. Ellie and I watch with equal parts fascination and horror. What is the cause of this feather-ruffling? 

The males mirror one another, their muscular necks arching like cobras. They circle endlessly, swimming just out of beak’s reach. 

I feel for the combatants, one of whom will surely lose. What then? Do geese fight to the death?  

Suddenly a third pair enters the scene. They join the chorus of honking, floating on the fringes of the watery arena.  

“Dad…” Ellie whispers. “What should we do?” 

I might’ve said, “Let nature take its course.” 

Instead, I scream: “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” 

For a moment, even the red-winged blackbirds turn silent, though the geese pay little mind. I scream again, slapping the water with my paddle and trying to make myself big. I fool no one. By now, the geese are so lost in the throes of battle that I’m little more than a backdrop. Not some apex predator, just some middle-aged dad in a kayak on a Sunday morning.   

Before this, I was under the impression that nature functioned with some level of predictability. That if observed long enough, the geese might reveal some pattern. If so, their pattern remains elusive to me. All I see is all-absorbing, fully focused warfare.  

The honking turns to hissing; we are helpless. And scared. I think again about how they are bigger than I imagined. Big enough to descend upon a kayak if they wanted. And wild enough to strike us with their explosive necks and beaks.  

I wonder if we are the cause of the ruckus. Had we drifted too far from the shoreline or paddled too close to the nest? And what are we to make of the second pair of geese? Did they have their own scores to settle? And what of the third pair—the greatest mystery of all? What role could they possibly play beyond voyeurism?  

And then, as fast as a stick snapped beneath a boot, it’s over. The voyeurs fly off, followed by the second pair, while the first pair reunites beside the reeds just 20 yards away. There are no mortal wounds, no blood in the water, but we are shaken. 

I paddle us toward the shoreline near the bay’s interior, the kayak’s nose parting the lily pads before closing again in our wake.  

Suddenly, a couple of college kids emerge from the cattails. 

“What the hell was that?” the young man asks. 

I tell them I have no idea. 

“I mean… it was like they were going to kill each other!” the young woman says. 

“You’re right,” I say. “It was nuts.” 

“They must have a nest,” the young man says. “I bet they were protecting some babies. Had to be babies.” 

I nod. Had to be babies. 

What but love might elicit such violence?