On Mountain Ponds
[img_assist|nid=5|title=Kayak|desc=by Hubert Schriebl|link=popup|align=right|width=250|height=109] I felt like Captain Hazelwood. Except I was quite sober. But I was still polluting the environment with the fumes and noise of a two-stroke engine. And rather than reefs, my main concern was avoiding Lake St. Catherine's forests of Eurasian milfoil, tendrils of which threatened to wrap around the propeller. Weaving out of the bay, I suddenly saw a duck off the bow. "Right!" said my friend Kim, pointing toward the bird. "No! Left! … Wait, right! Stop!" Ahhhhhh! My palm began to sweat on the throttle. The duck wisely took to the skies.
I apologized for my wayward navigational skills, and spying a large clump of leafy matter lurking just inches from the propeller, I twisted the throttle and commanded all six horsepower to bring us around Cone's Point to the safety of the open lake. My husband had told me piloting a motorboat was just like driving a riding lawn mower. But where was the steering wheel? Or the handy tortoise/hare graphic (indicating slow/fast) on the throttle? Slaloming toward the southern end of the lake, we were now heading directly toward a gentleman quietly fishing from his boat.
"Let's go back and rent a canoe," Kim offered.
Kim was visiting from Colorado, and I wanted to do something Vermont-like. On a warm summer's day-boating won out over hiking. We packed some snacks and headed to nearby Lake St. Catherine, a five-mile-long, one-mile-wide body of water that lies half in Poultney, half in Wells (Little Pond at the southern end adds another half-mile to the length). At the marina, given the choice of a motorboat or canoe, we chose the mechanized option. The faster we could go, the more we could explore. Or so we thought…
