We find the third
bear dead and there's no way to get past it on this slope without stepping on part of his already-
disintegrating body. Probably it's one of us who killed him, but no one admits to it. I think it's
tragic: he was rough but meant well, after all.
When we pass by later (we're walking in circles, we realize), there's nothing but coarse, greasy, smelly fur; most of the flesh has sunk into the ground. An incongruous monument has been erected by whomever it is that does those things, with bits of the bloody heads of two pigs doing strange things to each other - but it's all in high-gloss ceramic, so it's ok.
We have to keep moving but the scrub is pretty thick, and the exposed ground is all scrabble.
The lake water is
filthy and i don't trust it, but i have to get the boat, which is floating off and full of water. It's made of
aluminum foil and shards of stiff thin plastic, shaped like an extraordinarily long
canoe. I don't want to think about what i'm wading in, and what might be on the bottom by my feet, under the greasy grey water. My sister is chatting with a young man who's either a
boy scout of a high-ranking
military man. She's turning in the sun to get a better tan, so he moves as if on a track to stay in front of her.
There's a scum on top of the water, at about chest-level now, and it's hard to walk. I hope i don't slip and go under. I try giving the boat a push, but the mass of the water in it makes my push only slightly effective. But then the inertia starts taking it, as the water sloshes back and forth, and the boat gathers momentum in pulses. My sister shouts that the boat is going to run into an ugly rock garden nearby, and i manage to redirect it into the weeds. Suddenly my sister is dragging me through the water (by my hair?) and i end up in the weeds myself. The air bladders on the weeds are shaped like babies, i see: sickly waxy green babies, covered with algae, frog spawn, grease slicks, and six-pack holders. I am totally entangled.
Whoa, dizzy! Boats and pondweed. Get outta my head! It's not a nice place to be!