“Go explore,” Nan told me when she gave me the camera sixteen years ago.
And I did. I photographed every angle of this shoreline. I tromped through the bush and documented birds and bugs, mushrooms and moss. I snapped pale green lichens clinging to rocks and the wildflowers that grew along the contours of the driveway. Columbines and lilies and asters. I’d pick bunches of them for Nan, and she’d arrange them in a striped ceramic milk jug. I shot that, too.
I haven’t stopped exploring. My camera has been my passport, my permission slip to see new places and meet new people, safe behind my lens.
I float on my back, arms spread, and stare at the dimmingsky, the deepening purple and red. I’m not sure when I start crying, only that I’m overwhelmed with how big the galaxy is and how insignificant I am.
Six months ago, I thought I had it figured out. Work, boyfriend, condo: all sorted. And then Trevor dumped me, and I spiraled. I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong when I tried so hard to do everything right. I took on one job after another, needing some sense of control. When, two months after our breakup, he told me he’d met someone else, that they were getting married, I signed on to even more work. Headshots. Weddings. Creative work for car companies and banks. Before Nan’s fall, I hadn’t had a day off in nine weeks.
It’s been the busiest season of my career, but far from the most fulfilling. I’ve built my reputation on giving clients exactly what they want—my collaborators trust me to get the job done without headaches. I told myself if I worked hard enough, I’d reach the end of the rainbow and be rewarded with a windfall of artistic freedom. But the rainbow never ends. I’m stuck.
After my swim, I wrap myself in a towel and fold into the Muskoka chair, breathing in the sweet evening air and attempting to forget about my Toronto problems. I scan the cottages around the bay. There’s a big white house on top of a hill with a Jet Ski resting on a lift and a floating raft. Next to it, a small A-frame. They’re probably less than two hundred meters away, and both are familiar. It’s where the teenagers from my photo dived and swam and hung out for hours. I can picture them jumping into the water. Laughing. Flirting. Arguing. I envied them. Unburdened. Free.Happy.
A few minutes pass before two kids appear on the dock of the A-frame. As they cannonball into the water, one after the other, I feel like I’ve slid back in time, watching a reel from my past play before my eyes.
The unmistakable taunting of siblings travels across the water. They’re younger than the trio I spent my summer observing. They swim toward the floating raft at the white house next door and climb up the ladder. I laugh as the girl pushes the boy into the water. They clamber back onto the raft and begin a game of who can jump the farthest.
I relax into the chair, shutting my eyes as I listen to their happy squeals. I’m used to the din of the city. I grew up with the white noise of traffic and sirens as my bedtime lullaby. But I forgot how much I love the serenity of the lake. I breathe deeply, letting it fill my lungs.
I stay like that until the kids have dried off and gone inside, and there is nothing but the lapping of water and the laughter of adults from somewhere on the bay.
But then I hear it.
The motor is so loud it disrupts the tranquility even before it’s in sight.
I straighten as a boat angles around the bay. I blink a few times, covering my mouth. Maybe I have fallen through time. Because the boat is yellow.
And it’s coming straight for me.
6
It’s zipping across the water, leaving a stripe of foaming white in its wake. My heart races as it gets closer. There’s only one person inside, but all I can make out is that it’s a man with light brown hair. As he passes the dock, he lifts his hand. It’s the universal greeting on the lake, not because he knows me. I wave back and then jump at the sound of its horn.
Aaaah-whoooo-gaaaaah!
It’s the most absurd sound, and I know it. I heard it dozens of times when I was seventeen.
The boat cuts across the bay and slows in front of the white house with the floating raft. The engine stops. The man ties it to the dock and climbs out, but it’s too dim to tell if he’s one of the boys from my photo. I lose his shape as he heads up the hill. If it were morning, when the sun hits the shore, I know I’d be able to see him more clearly. I remember how that house glowed like a beacon in the early hours of the day.
I stay there for a moment, and then I dart up to the cottage two steps at a time. I fling my towel over the clothesline that’s strung between two white pines, throw on my caftan, and race inside.
I’m not sure why I packed the photo except that I wanted it with me. I find it tucked in the pages of my notebook.
And there it is—the same boat, sixteen summers ago, when three teens formed its crew. It’s not just the shade of yellow that makes it distinctive. It’s old—it would have been vintage even when I took the photo—with brown vinyl seats and a bow curved like a duck bill.
I stare at the three passengers, the sun glowing on their cheeks and shoulders. The girl faces the wind, one hand in her wet hair, trying to hold it out of her face. There’s a towel around her torso, gold bathing suit straps peeking out of the top.
The younger of the boys is cute, gangly in the way of quick-growing adolescents. He wears a T-shirt and is staring at the girl like no one else in the world exists. I spent enough time watching them to know the older boy is his brother. He’s gorgeous and tan and is looking at his sibling with a happy, satisfied smirk. I liked to imagine having a boyfriend like him.
It was a fluke I got the shot. An unlikely combination of luck and timing. I’d been shooting Luca and Lavinia as they played in the water. I’d heard the motor and looked up through my lens just as they zoomed by.
I immediately checked the camera screen to see what I’d captured. As soon as I saw the photo, I was hit with a sense of purpose I’d never experienced before. I was meant to be a photographer.
I called itOne Golden Summer.
It was the standout in my portfolio when I applied to my photography program. Elyse was one of my instructors, and years later, she told me it was the reason I’d been accepted—that it showed I had promise, an eye for emotion, a knack for drawing the viewer into an image. Maybe it’s because I wanted to be in that boat with those kids so badly.
The eight weeks I spent in Barry’s Bay were a turning point. I often felt invisible as a teenager, but behind a lens, invisibility became my superpower. With a camera, I discovered a place inthe world where I thrived. I’m a better photographer now, but the way I shot back then, standing on the edge of the dock, had a purity I’ll never recapture. I was doing something just for myself.
