Unsupervised

 “There was supervised recreation. This is the original contradiction of terms. It was for making suggestions about supervised recreation that the devil was cast into hell; any other account you have heard is false.”
— R. A. Lafferty

Chilly tonight, 60s I guess. Perfect riding weather. Bettina isn’t designed for this kind of riding, especially in midnight dark. After carefully maneuvering around the ancient padlocked road closure gate, I have to pay particular attention to keep from dumping her half-ton of rolling metal on the barely discernible track through the high, grassy weeds.

Even under the brilliant full moon, dense black walls crowd close on both sides of the abandoned track, towering oaks, piney-looking cedars, huge pecan trees, mixed with sad, drooping willows and underbrush tangled with thorny vines wrapping everything in sleeping beauty spikes three inches long. But still even after all these decades, only saplings and thigh-high grasses have overtaken the hardpack of the old roadway. It’s heavily overgrown, the curving scar through the forest gapping between the trees the main evidence it exists at all.

We, the machine and I, growl along at a barely walking pace, nosing out the double tracks from the leaping shadows in the headlight. More than once I snap my head around for some hazard rushing out of the underbrush only to have it to dissolve into shifting night-rippling shadow at the edge of my lights and vision.

“Careful,” I tell myself. I know that a mistake will put us in one of the run-off ditches that slope steeply on either side of the narrow two-track road. The damp smell of old wood and grass and sharp mint and rot, forest smells, rolls in earthy, dark waves.

My heart jumps as three pair of surprised animal eyes suddenly reflect at us from a denser black patch of trees as we ease around a corner, then with a grunt, disappear crashing into the brush. Probably deer, this time of year. Who knows.

About a mile in, the intersecting slash running left to right through the otherwise trackless forest marks the path of the apocalyptic remains of the main highway. It slopes sharply down to the lake, which is suddenly visible about a quarter mile away, defined by moon sparkles reflecting from near-windless ripples.

I start down the road, not deceived by the illusion of an easier path. It is two lanes wide, but is nothing but hard-pack and broken asphalt and concrete, nature chewing it into irregular jagged blocks of barely recognizable chunks and slabs and dust. If anything it’s even more dangerous than the ancient decaying dirt road I’d taken so far.

I laugh at myself as I turn right onto the shattered, overgrown roadway that falls sharply down between low shoulders of forested hillocks — I nearly used my turn signal. Habit, I guess. No traffic here — the destroyed highway crosses the jungle-like peninsula, rising up out of the lake on one side and shooting straight as a survey-line the two miles across and then back down into the water on the other side, its broken trace continuing both directions 100’ below the dammed lake’s surface to towns on opposite, distant shores.

Bettina takes me to within a few yards of the lapping water and I park and shut her down. The darkness rushes over us like a wave. My eyes rapidly adjust to the moonlight pouring down over my black-forest beach. I sit on Bettina like a couch, soak up the silence and watch the lights of the small town shimmering across the water.

The moonlight seems to brighten more toward near-daylight level the longer I sit. The water lapping across the broken roadway murmurs — and I suddenly want to be in it.

I snort a laugh.

“Yeah, good call, fat boy. No swimming gear, about 1:00 AM on a beach that consists of dangerous broken roadway out in the boondocks 20 miles from where anyone thinks you’ll be, and let’s not even talk about the fact that you haven’t been in water deeper than a stream-bed since Christ was a corporal.”

I consider for a moment, then pull the pair of Sketchers shoes out of my saddlebag, there to keep me from having to wear combat boots all day at work.

I could just pull off my boots and socks and roll up my pants. I’d be sacrificing the shoes, but I could at least get in wading-deep, if I insisted.

“But that rolling pants up thing never works — y’know what, just pull them off. Ain’t nobody within 5 miles who’s going to get a look at your chubby day-glow ass wobbling around out here in the middle of the night.”

And so the internal compromise continues, one button, one zipper, one article of clothing at a time, teasing as a pole dancer.

In the end I'm standing naked except for the Sketchers and suddenly remember that — well, it’s chilly out here, and also, yet again, that this is probably the worst idea ever. Assuming I don’t get snakebit, drown, or fall and break something, I’ll probably freeze to death. The rule-maker in my head chatters with increasing urgency.

“Fuck it,” I tell myself, shutting it off. “No guts, no medals.”

And then I’m in the water, about 30’ out, floating on my back. Probably the most comical — or at least weirdest — float toy ever in this particular lake. Even the moon should get a chuckle at this chunky fatboy slopping around in the water like a phosphorescent, badly beaching whale, but it seems unfazed. The moon is probably even better than dogs at accepting you without comment regardless of your spectacle.

The water is cool, but not terribly so — probably warmer than the air, truth be told. And it is peaceful. Beautiful, in fact. The moon pours over me and Bettina, who sits patiently in the gateway-gap of the dark-fairytale forest; the occasional glitter of distant cars and trucks mutters across the bridge that replaced the drowned road I’m now suspended over. Perfect. I slowly swim, and time passes unmarked.

Eventually I walk back up out of the lake, a visitor from Atlantis rising from the water, exploring the old trace of the mysterious road running through my domain.

It’s cold. Shivering, I dry myself as well as I can using most of the pack of lintless shop towels I keep in the travelpack. Finally dressed and rapidly warming in the leathers, Bettina and I crawl back up the vanishing track and out to the world, then howl at the top of our lungs at 80 on the familiar asphalt twisties.

Thanks, whichever part of my brain it is that occasionally talks me into ripping off the chain and doing stuff like this. I didn’t even know I needed it.