Raised in Ruins. Tara Neilson

spots are our skiffs.

      Firewood logs broke loose, skiffs broke loose, the walkway to the wanigan broke loose, and one night during a hurricane-force storm, our floathouse broke loose.

      It was a night when Dad was home. He was the one who knew instantly when the swifter cables holding our floathouse to shore snapped in the surge. He yelled for us all to get outside. Mom only stopped long enough to make sure we put on our lifejackets and then we scrambled out.

      With only flashlights, we faced the black gale. Mom and the five of us kids, from oldest to youngest, were ordered to the back of the float where we had to grab hold of one of the broken cables to stop the floathouse from being sucked out into the larger bay. We planted our feet as best we could and our hands burned on the rusty, twisted steel strands that formed the cable. Our arms were almost yanked out of their sockets as the many tons of floathouse surged.

      Dad jumped into our thirteen-foot Boston Whaler, puny looking against the sixty-foot length of the heavy float. He had all the force of the fifty-horsepower Mercury outboard at his command as he turned the throttle up and pushed against the house, trying to force it back far enough into position so that we could get a wrap of the cable around the brow log to hold it in place.

      Wind whipped at our bodies, buffeting the little ones so hard it was a wonder they didn’t get blown away. Maybe only their grip on the cable kept them in place. A mix of rain and spray splattered us. The tree branches of the surrounding forest rose and fell in the gusts almost as violently as the floathouse rose and fell in the heavy, sucking surge.