Seaweed

We called it seaweed even though it was in the middle of a freshwater lake.

Semantics...

Potamogeton praelongus. I have no idea if this is the actual thing at the bottom of our particular lake but it was on the University of Montana’s website and that’s good enough for me.

You'd be out on top of that glassy smooth and freezing cold water, on a windless bluebird day, just a slalom ski between the sole of your foot and the lake. You'd lean out left, gripping the rope’s rubber handle in both hands for balance and speed, away from the tumbling bubbles kicked up by the boat. A speedbump of a wake would greet you into the pure, unwaked lake where you might see your reflection or see the forest green deep arguing with the reflection of the sky blue. Put your hand down and feel your fingers dip into the cold water, gliding through its surface, creating a wake of their own. It's a sensual smoothness that might trick you into thinking you have no texture to your skin, no fingerprints, nothing to catch or chafe. I was never out there just for that, but if the lake was sedate enough I always had to run my hand through its hair at least once.

You'd round your turn out and tug the rope into your hip, lowering your body down, maybe to a 45 degree (or less) angle to the water. The lower you got, the more the spraying water gnawed at your calf, leaping from its surface with a ferocity and relentlessness that you'd feel the next day or might even see in a bruisy badge of honor. There wasn't a lot of worry about falling¹. Just kick up a big spray, make a hard cut, pull hard, keep your ski on edge, find a rhythm.

Once in awhile, though, out in the shallower parts of the lake, near where jutting land starts to break up the Madison Arm², at the hottest and driest time of summer when the water levels evaporate and recede, you'd look down onto that glassy surface and see—not your reflection but—an underwater jungle of swaying green arms, a massive million-armed organism, a green woozy pentecostal congregation with its collective hands in the air, waiting for you to cut wrong or catch an edge, ready to envelope you. Everyone had done it: gotten a little too cavalier in the shallows of the seaweed. Maybe you catch an edge. Maybe you dig your ski in too far or don’t lean back far enough. Whatever it was, you'd fall/crash/eat it, then sink into the lake, then—while waiting for the boat to circle back around and fetch you—start to feel the submerged, aquatic, leafy tentacles wrapping around your legs and arms. The boat swung around and tried to get you back up quickly or fear the propeller getting choked in the weeds. I never saw anyone fall into the underwater weeds without making some kind of “ew” face. Nobody ever died or was even hurt but it was gross with a creepy-crawly-slithery element to it, and I know all it took was one fall into the slippery entanglement and from then on I always took it a little easier, took my cuts a little less aggressively, and waited for the lake bottom to drop off again before I started cutting with any degree of soul.

1. “If you’re not falling, you’re not trying.” - Every boat driver I ever skied behind

2. Yes. That’s where the band name came from. I wanted something meaningful and personal—the section of the lake most likely to have smooth (see also: desirable) water—but also with some mystery. I think it probably came with too much mystery because people bungled it all the time:
Ladies and gentlemen, Paul Jacobsen & The Madison Army!
Please welcome Paul Jacobsen & The Madison Armor!
Everyone’s favorite sex symbols: Paul Jacobsen & The Madison Armistice! (ok, that one didn’t happen but the other two did.)