The boys of autumn

We’d finished our hike around Ile St-Marguerite and were planning on meeting the tender at the stone pier in front of La Guérite, one of only two cafes on the island, when Hardy—or maybe it was Austin—suggested swimming back to Unplugged instead. This was a dicey proposition. For one thing, there was a dive boat between the shore and Unplugged so a swim would necessitate plowing through the dive school that was just now getting in the water. For another thing, these waters are famous for jellyfish and we’d seen a rather large school of them only the day before.

But what the hell. We’d just spent the last couple of hours leisurely strolling through the eucalyptus and pine forests of the island, breaking off into little groups of two or three and discussing those things of morbid interest to middle-aged men who’ve known each other for years, or even decades in some cases, and who’ve watched each others’ hairlines recede and paunches expand. We’d talked of friends we had recently lost; of the dissolution of more than one marriage. We’d reminded each other of when we played tennis every Sunday morning, of ski trips in Switzerland, of falling in love with beautiful women a long, long time ago, when we were more virile then we are now. Both the chilly walk and the conversation had, I think, made us all a little melancholy.

Joseph Conrad said it best: “I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself.”

 

And so the boys of autumn—Hardy, Austin, and Roberts—stripped down to their shorts, handing off their shoes and packs to the rest of us, and minced their way down the rocky path, their hands above their heads, their bare feet pointed like ballerinas, until they made it to the chilly water. One at a time they lowered themselves into the water and freestyled, then breast stroked, and eventually back-stroked their pale bodies back to Unplugged. Where, with smug, if tired, looks on their faces, they waited for us topside on the boat. One couldn’t help but admire them.