(Howell Creek Radio episode for Saturday, July 7, 2012 -- ) # Once Around the Lake Last weekend we were up in what we call The Northwoods, a lodge up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, near the town of Watersmeet (this is why you didn't get a podcast last weekend). We were there for a reunion of guys that had gone to the ALERT Academy. ALERT stood for Air Land Emergency Resource Team, and it was billed as this program for young men that would whip you into shape, make you into kind of a Christian ideal of a U.S. Marine, and teach you all kinds of skills, and while you were there you were all supposedly on call to respond and provide aid for natural disasters of all kinds. Why did I go to ALERT? From the time when I was very young I was very self-critical, and I had an almost self-destructive hunger for righteousness. I believe I had an idea that ALERT would force me to confront and overcome the many weaknesses I saw in myself. What I found when I got there was a bunch of guys who came for vastly different reasons than I did. Some saw ALERT as a prepping grounds before moving on to the real military. Some were sent by their parents in the hope of having them straightened out. Some had a fatally ignorant notion that it was comparable in stress level to a boy scout encampment. A few came for the same reasons I had. So there were all kinds of guys there, and many of them wired to resist regulation rather than be shaped by it, which was kind of a new experience for me. At the time I was disappointed by this, but lately I'm inclined to see it as a crucial part of my personal growth. The program's vast emphasis on physical endurance and appearances meant that the prevailing culture was something that at best you'd say was very atheletic, or -- at other, worse, times -- downright jock-ish. There was a very explicit and official pecking order based on unit seniority and rank. Whatever the intent, one of the big effects was to make the place a kind of greenhouse for all the male posturing I thought I'd already lived through in the third grade. So for the first time I was in close quarters with actual human beings, some of whom were doing their best to do a good job, and some of whom seethed, fought, and did their best to be honest in a smothering culture of posturing and appearances. The program's leaders, for the most part, saw this as a threat to their effectiveness, and pushed back with rules and regulations to the point where even I began to think it was almost silly. It wasn't until years later that I began to suppose that perhaps, for me, the rebels were actually one of the most valuable features of the program. Perhaps this is one of the secret threads of all human histories. * * * So now ten years later, some of the alumni started making phone calls and organizing a reunion in Michigan, and Trixie and I decided to go. Saturday morning we played a few games out in the field by the runway. Most of the guys were married and had kids by now, and the pace of the game reflected the changes in physiology brought on by these new seasons in life; but we still inevitably managed to end an ostensibly non-contact frisbee game in a scrum pile. I was hearing nearly the same sounds I'd grown used to hearing ten years ago: the chest-bumping, the pointless and proud injuries, the line "work harder, not smarter" pronounced often and only half in jest, and by the same almost-forgotten voices. You never know what to expect when you re-open acquaintances from an old and odd chapter of your life. I needed time to digest it all and was glad to get alone with Trixie for awhile to rollerblade the drive around Wolf Lake. * * * The loop cut through a forest on either side, with the lake often only just visible through the trees to our left. Every once in a while we'd note a path or a thicket or a cabin in the woods that held some memory for one of us. It wasn't long before it became apparent that this would be no idle roll down memory lane. A cluster of deer flies gathered and followed close behind our bodies in a loose cloud of erratic, elliptical orbits, bumping stupidly into our faces, arms, and legs, and occasionally managing to land in the hair on the back of our heads. They seemed to be giving Trixie a good deal more attention that myself. She was wearing a swimsuit with a houndstooth pattern of hot pink and white with a sky blue frill, and matching shorts -- and it seems the deer flies thought she was just as much of a knockout as I did. There seemed nothing for it but to keep trying to wave them off and go as fast as we could manage. But the hills on the drive seemed to grow longer, and we seemed to be climbing much more often than not. Our gasps of exasperation with the flies marked time like a slow metronome, and I tried to imagine how it was ever going to be possible for us to leave and arrive at the same spot having gone uphill the whole way round. Finally the lodge did come into view again. We pulled around front, making straight for the lake. We'd averaged a five and a half minute mile, which we might never have done on this course but for the flies, but we didn't care. Jumping in that great expanse of deep blue northern water was about the only thing on our minds by then. * * * About thirty of us were playing water polo in between the two docks as though we'd never stopped knowing each other. The lake was the great equalizer: no one in the water could really be any faster or more agile than anyone else. The older bones and muscles, the extra weight, it made no difference here. And neither did any of the old divisions of clique or of rank either. Ten years of real life and real defeats had washed over us, and there was a new easyness to the play that hadn't been there the first time around. The competitive ones with their sharp angles still had their sharp angles -- but the edges were rounded. Years ago at these games I had seemed to see only young devils with nothing in their pockets scrapping like their futures depended on it -- now, as we sloshed, piled upon, playfully drowned each other, I could see only living statues, immortals, acting out a scene written long ago, easily playing out their own natures against each other. The next morning we all had a talk in the sanctuary. For several, marriages and faith were both on the wrecking heap. These are the two defeats that our old catachism taught us particularly to despise most in people, the unmistakeable marks of God's final verdict; but it was with these two defeats in our mouths that for a little while we took off our masks and had a real look at each others' faces...and, glory be, what a beautiful revelation; who would ever have imagined? Synopsis -------- Radio address for July 7, 2012, about a reunion in the Northwoods with some men I haven't seen in a long time. It's always been hard to say what I think about ALERT now, ten years after graduation; but now if anyone asks, I feel I could point them at the thoughts in this recording, and maybe they could understand if they really listened. Music is [_The Park_][1] by Secret Cities, [_Two Matchsticks_][2] by The Wooden Birds, and [_Demons_][3] by Dry the River. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004RR8OKU/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004RR8OKU [2]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00508WWRQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00508WWRQ [3]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007R69EGQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007R69EGQ