Aviana Tovanche

I Can Only Be a Buoy

Depending on where you approach this, it could be muddy, raucous, rippling or slamming, sand or gravel. There are several points of access that each allow me to regard this body in a novel way. The Lake Erie I am swallowed by entering from Edgewater is not the same Lake Erie I come to from the Headlands. What is most compelling to me about these places is that no matter how hard you get wrung out, not holding a red cent to give, they do not care. My last summer during high school was the summer of Lake Erie for my family, the happiest summer I’ve seen yet. A body of water giving and taking life each year, completely ours for no cost, but also answering to no-one and nothing. Except for the EPA. It’s getting better, but people still curl up their faces when I say I wade in it sometimes. They picture green sludge, but I mostly think about that Medical Diagnosis episode where the girl went into a summer lake and came out with a brain-eating amoeba. So, I don’t stick my head underwater. Still, I let it hold me and I bob with it, up-down and side-to-side. I press forward to go deeper, my feet trying to escape from the jagged stones and sticks. I think of those who walk the cobble-stone path on their knees, bloodying and battering themselves. Catholics. I do something similar in order to be worthy of this grand body of water, an apology for all of the denigration it faces. It’s getting better.

What about something more highly esteemed? Flowing, gushing, violent when you get in its face. Soft and spattering with enough distance. This is Niagara Falls, where the marrying of water from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario occurs. I was seven years old and full of excited nerves entering a boat to traverse the Niagara River. Before this, the only mode of transportation I had taken was a car. No plane, no boat, no train, just a sage-colored family van. I tried to balance my flashing fears of being taken by the water with the knowledge that I was going to know a little bit more about the world, maybe something it was time for a seven-year old to know. Prior to taking off, an employee doled out red, translucent ponchos. Eventually, engines began to scream and the boat cut through the river. The Maid of the Mist careened towards the unrelenting curtain of water and breathed in all of the surrounding droplets. Cold and cloaking mist that made my hairs stand on the ends. The ponchos served a great purpose. I looked at the falls that rushed and pounded into the open mouth of the water. Earlier that day, we went to an exhibit that showed grainy clips of funambulists walking a tightrope over the gorge. I was reminded of my father, who told me that water should be respected. You are not bigger nor better than water, you are a fallible human with internal reservoirs for liquid to infiltrate and choke you to death. I was never a strong swimmer. I decided at that moment I would never elect to tightrope walk across Niagara Falls.