“For the love of god, save me!” A man flails at the center of ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake,’ drowning very, very slowly. “Something just brushed my leg. Oh god, it’s biting me!”
I look down to make sure Hector hasn’t escaped his harness, hasn’t swam or tunneled through the taffy to reach the man’s legs. It doesn’t seem like something Hector would be capable of, but it seems like something he would do anyway. The rabbit remains on his leash, chewing idly at a blade of grass.
“I can see you!” The man calls. “You’re letting me die!”
His is not an enviable situation. It’s a warm day and the taffy was soft enough to dip under my foot with half my weight still on the shore. It’s warm enough that the taffy swallowed the print I left in a minute or so, erasing any evidence that might have suggested I was ever here. It’s warm enough that ants swarm the lake and they are certainly not so heavy as to sink and not so discerning when it comes to the difference between flesh and taffy.
“Help!”
What I want to know is, how would a guy like that get out into the middle of the lake to begin with? What’s his scam?
‘Everyone’s got their own explanation regarding the scarcity of freshwater taffy relative to its saltwater cousin but let’s set the record straight. Freshwater taffy is just grosser. The mild saltwater content of saltwater taffy acts as a barrier to common germs and parasites that thrive in a stagnant freshwater lake and the consistency of taffy doesn’t really allow it to be anything but stagnant, even in the best of conditions.
This is true of ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake’ in upper Montana, which is a blight on the land in just about every season. It’s a germ-ridden magnet for bugs in the summer, it’s an uncooperative skating rink in the winter, and despite municipal efforts to add new colors, it churns just enough to settle back to an unappetizing grayish-brown within a month or two. The last person that ate from ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake’ died a week later and, though it’s true that he was killed in a car accident, it seems safe to assume that hanging around ‘The Lake’ is just bad luck. It’s only a matter of time before it kills someone for real.’
I feel a twinge of guilt a week later when I read the story of an amateur paraglider, Albert McCormack, who was carried off-course by a rogue gust of wind and landed in the center of ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake,’ thinking it was a particularly unfertile patch of flat dirt. He began to sink and, with nobody around to hear his calls for help, was swallowed by the taffy. His body was extricated after someone spotted a corner of his glider poking from the candy like a shark’s fin.
It’s encouraging to me that the ghosts I’ve witnessed have been more or less anchored to their haunting sites. Suffice to say, I don’t think I’ll be returning to ‘The Freshwater Taffy Lake.’ This nomadic life requires a minimalist approach to baggage.
-traveler
