Trespassing

 Trespassing

Noel Laflin

1-2-23

When I was seventeen, two friends and I attempted to launch a small raft into what is now referred to as the Santiago Basins. The basins, of which there are three, are Blue Diamond, Bond, and Smith Basin. We were just about to push off into the Blue Diamond Basin waters, one fine spring day, before being kicked out of the area by a quick-thinking maintenance worker.

We never got to paddle about the reservoir in the cheap yellow Army-Navy surplus rubber raft that I had purchased for twenty bucks; birthday money well spent, in my opinion. Instead, it was deflated and thrown back into the trunk of my old ’65 Valiant; my friends and I quietly cursed the man all the way back up the steep side of the bank and eventually just got back in my car and found trouble somewhere else.

But, as I live just two miles from where we were about to set sail (there was no sail, actually – just two short paddles), not a day goes by these last forty years that I wish the maintenance man had not been so vigilant that day. He probably went home that night and told his wife about the three numskulls that he had saved from drowning. But I still think longingly about the adventure that never was.

The place is fenced all around nowadays as the banks are steep, crumbly, and treacherous, should one want to reach the shoreline. They were steep, crumbly, and treacherous back in the spring of 1970, I suppose, too, but there was no fence to stop us. And when you are young, stupid, and determined to launch your ship (even if it’s just a cheap rubber raft, sans sails), you safely make the climb down – and, sadly, back up again, all too soon.

I wish I had a picture of that raft – better yet, a picture of the three of us hauling it down to old Blue Diamond, but mobile phones wouldn’t come along for another three decades.

However, I do have a picture of a Wolf Moon taken fifty years later as it descended over Smith Basin. I snuck into the place one dark January morning three years ago (right about now) as it’s easier to do so than at either of the other two reservoirs, ignoring the ‘No Trespassing’ signs liberally posted about. Fortunately, as it was pretty early in the morning, and a Sunday at that, there was no maintenance man to toss me out. Maybe because I carried no bright yellow raft, either, might have also worked in my favor.

As I see it, there is some belated justice in the world – or at least in my small corner of it - even without a raft, or youth at my disposal any longer. But I do have a camera nowadays, a little more wisdom, slow moving stealth (but glucosamine helps), and sometimes, even luck. Plus there was that gorgeous Wolf Moon, so, perhaps it was a fair tradeoff in the adventure zone after all.