Never get out of the boat

"Never get out of the boat. Absolutely right. Unless you were goin' all the way.
Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole program. "
- Willard, Apocalypse Now

Another story about roaming the woods as a kid
(Briefer version originally entered as a comment in the previous post)

Near a place where we fished there was an abandoned resort, hosting a large cache of wild asparagus. In the heat of the day (When walleye fishing can get slow) my brother in law would beach our boat in the old harbor and we would go ashore. I was allowed to wander around while he harvested.

The entire place was blanketed under huge maples - even in broad daylight the place had a shady and sinister feel to it. As we entered the harbor I felt as though I could feel eyes upon me. The moment that I swung my leg over the side of the boat and set foot on that ground I had the uneasy feeling that comes with knowingly trespassing, the sensation that any second some pissed off landowner's hell hound was going to come charging out from the trees and maul me before I could retreat.

I remember rummaging through the junk that was strewn around, and peering in through the dirty windows of the cabins. The place had not been used for some time, maybe 20 years. I imagined the people who had stayed there, wondered where the former owners were now and why the resort had closed. Had there been a tragedy, or a terrible crime? My 10-year old mind had a flair for the dramatic and did not process concepts such as economic viability or bankruptcy. Death and or dismemberment seemed quite likely to me. In my mind's eye I could see the bleached bones of fishermen and 10 year old boys beneath the floorboards of those cabins.

It was the height of dog days and there was no relief from the heat, even in the shade. It only served to encourage the mosquitos, who bit fiercely, even in the middle of the day. I don't know if it was all the bloodletting or just the creepy feeling I got from trespassing in that place, but I was relieved when we retreated to the boat and departed for the evening bite.

We made three incursions that summer. Each time afterward our dinner consisted of fresh Walleye, baked potatoes and asparagus from that haunted place. At night I would go out into the dark woods near our cabin to relieve myself under the stars. Like Juvenal Urbino in the book Love in the Time of Cholera, I enjoyed the immediate pleasure of smelling a secret garden in my urine that had been purified by lukewarm asparagus. To this day the smell associated with asparagus will take me back to those woods where I felt my hair biting into my sunburned neck as I stood with my face pointed to heaven, gazing at the milky way and wondering where we all end up when we dump our junk and shutter up our cabins for good.