“Is the water clear? It looks so blue.” Â “Yes, it’s very clear — it’s amazing.”
How surreal it must be to stand along the shores, where the mountains are covered with tan before a line of forest green trees touch the sky. “It’s dead grass,” he tells me about the “tan” over the phone when I tell him how beautiful it is.
Old enough, and talented enough to complete. Barely alive long enough to know how fleeting this moment  is — the once-in-a-lifetime chance it just may be. Yet, this is probably the story they will mention, some night, at a campfire, years from now — if it happens to come up.
But maybe they know now. After listening to the graduation speeches last Sunday that reverberated the one single message: Your problems won’t end by the end of the next class period. (Did they ever?)
These amazing boys, on a scholastic crew team, competing in the national championship against the “club teams.”  This means, he tells me, that all the other rowing teams were created by picking the best of the best rowers from across the city to create a club. Their team, our team, is just a simple school team, competing in US Rowing Youth National Championship Regatta at Lake Natoma, CA USA.
His is a two-man boat, a pair. No coaxin to help cheer them on, steer and guide them. On Friday and Saturday, they competed in the trials. Their competitors are 6 foot 6, he tells me — the biggest of the best. 
The big news of the day — of time — they qualified — and are moving onto the finals tomorrow morning.
These pictures, sent to me by another mom there, standing on the shores, look so Nancy-Drew-vintage to me. It’s definitely a place I would have loved to see. I wish I was there. I should have dropped everything, forgot about the cost and just went.