Laura & Eliza
The summer of 2011 was brutal. Over 100 days of over 100 degrees. It felt permanent. The end of Winter, the end of rain. Trees died by the hundreds and islands appeared in Lake Travis and grew into jungles. I was grinding out an hour commute twice a day and it didn't leave much left of my life. Laura was stay at home momming. According to her, she enjoyed it but also lost her mind in the toddler orbit, trying to maintain friendships in the desperate sorority of single moms.
Their chief method of staying sane was adventuring. The two of them hiked, attended music shows, story times, art installations, outdoor performances. Laura has the natural ability to wander into strange situations and make friends, but Eliza had Elvis level charisma. The way she walked into a room, took in what was happening, and said what was on her mind tended to become the focus of the event, so they never knew where the day would take them. I lived vicariously from a cubicle and demanded full descriptions over dinner. Their preferred mode of adventuring, especially in that awful summer, was on water. Usually, they paddled the West end of Town Lake, past Mopac where the city abruptly changes into cliffs and jungle, but that gets boring and so one day they put in at the youth hostel on the east side. It seemed impossibly located even then, with sleepy road trippers staggering around the small building, cornered up against the river by sketchy apartment complexes. Eliza perched on the nose of the SUP board while Laura paddled, sometimes lying prone and helping with her hands. Without a destination, they paddled into open water and saw the island, the only obvious destination.
When you get to a shore, you can tell its a real place because you can’t see the rest of it. Just trees, roots, and a muddy embankment extending left and right, just like any continent. When you arrive with nothing but a swimsuit, it feels bigger. They wedged the board in some vegetation and picked their way up the embankment, around the abundant poison ivy. The dirt up there was packed down by bare feet, leaves flattened. They heard the music before they saw the revelers. A dozen Austin weirdos were dressed as pirates, drinking and singing. They gave my wife a beer and Eliza swung on the swing and talked to their leader, who bestowed upon her a plastic necklace made of orange and black skulls.
That night I learned things from my daughter: first, pirates are real. Not desperate Sommolians who climb aboard freighters, but swashbuckling, carousing barefoot yahoos who sing and dance and hand out jewelry. Second, there is an island in the lake that exists outside normal space and time, where the pirates live.