Once More to the Lake

E. B. White's essay "Once More to the Lake" was a shorter piece written in 1941 about White's trips to a specific lake in Maine as a child, and how those trips compared and encroached upon the trip he makes with his son to the same lake many years later. The essay focuses a lot on memory and experiences, and how time can stand still and yet move forward at the same time, as well as how a person's identity and place in the world can be hard to grasp onto.

In the second paragraph White says that, "It is strange how much you can remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back" (White 533). As a child my family, myself included, would visit friends in a specific town in Michigan, the name of which now escapes me. We took these vacations when I was very young and stopped before I was even ten, so my memory of the trips are foggy. Yet what White says is true, in that if I allow my mind to sit on the subject of those trips to Michigan for long periods I am amazed by what I can remember. Just as White begins thinking of unique things like the lack of full floor-to-ceiling partitions, I can remember the piano Nikki would play to entertain us all and the exact way it sat situated against the wall. That sentence reminds me of what a fickle thing memory is, and how extraordinary it can be in storing away hidden bits of information, and then being able to recall those bits years and years later.

Another lines that was intriguing was when White said he, "began to sustain the illusion that (his son) was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father" (White 534). He goes on to talk in that paragraph about saying or doing things that suddenly makes him realize he is acting his father. He calls this "creepy," and I find it interesting because White is not the only person who feels this way about becoming his parental figure. I have often had friends say that if they become their mother, or father, that they will be very upset and want somebody to stop them. People never become somebody else like a clone, but it makes sense in my mind that every child would pick up on mannerisms and patterns of speech that resemble their parents'. I don't view this as a bad thing, or creepy, because we are what the tools we have shapes us into, and our parents are part of that tool set. Nor is necessarily bad, even if you appear to be developing a bad mannerism a parent had, because sometimes the things that parents did or said that were bad can be transformed in your life to bring immense good.

A recurring topic in the essay is time, and the lack of movement of time White felt once back in Maine. He states multiple times "There had been no years" (White 535). I think this theme was particularly intriguing to me because I generally have the opposite problem, in that I always experience things in a way that makes it blatantly obvious to me that time has passed. People are older, different experiences have shaped me, all reminders of the clock constantly ticking. White had the ability to go back to a place, a place prominent in his past but not a part of his every day life, that somehow did not change much with the test of time. I have never known a place like this, as most places of my childhood are places that I grew up in, in which case the change is always very evident. I wonder, though, whether I have just not experienced enough years and enough places to have this sense of timelessness, and in the future if I will be able to relate to White more on the subject.

The parts that I really began to relate with White were as he began to talk of the things that did change, such as the passage about the excitement of arriving being diminished by the popularity of cars, and efficiency that technology had brought to the lake in Maine. He says there is no "loud wonderful fuss about trunks" (White 536), a description not often heard. Wonderful and fuss are generally not two adjectives placed together, and yet I can understand what White means. Sometimes a fuss is more interesting than a quietness or meekness when it comes to things that can effect a community, like the arrival to the lake in Maine when White was a child. This would be an all encompassing event, a fabulous journey leading to a great reward that the entire community would celebrate as the wagon appeared. Lack of fuss also means lack of communication, and community bonding.

I was also highly interested in the talk of the new motors for boats, and how they disturb the peace that White was used to, like an annoying bug. It made me wonder what White would think today, going back to that lake in Maine. Is it possible things have still stayed mostly the same? How would he feel about children on water-skis out on the lake, and all the loud noises technology makes today? There would most likely not be the peace and quiet anymore, except in those very early mornings he was fond of back in his past. Or perhaps I am wrong, and that lake in Maine is an oasis really separate from time. Maybe the tar never reached the lake, the quiet never succumbed to the new toys of my generation.

Overall, I found the essay captivating, with many parts of it resonating with me. Reading that essay took me back in time just as the trip to the lake took White back, and as I read the essay it did for me what I hope reading can always do. It did truly make things come to a stand still. While reading there had been no years, or in this case, no minutes.