The Day in 1997 When the World Went Quiet

Actual correspondence from 1997

Yesterday, when I wrote about the time I used to go fishing with a friend in that very polluted lake in New Jersey as a way to have something to do and hang out after long hours of studying and waiting for my friends to be done with work, it reminded me of another similar story that happened to me. I know the exact date because, while going through some of my old notes and writings from before I was even married, I found a letter I wrote to someone telling this story.

I was still living in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, and it was July 14th, 1997. The whole thing started around 3 o’clock in the morning. At the time, my two sisters lived in Leonia, New Jersey, and I would often go to their apartment and sometimes even spend the night there because my younger sister had a bigger monitor and a faster computer than the one I had at home. I was still using my dad’s Compaq Presario, and she had a much better machine that we had bought together at one of those weekly computer fairs they used to have in Jersey. As far as I know, they probably still do.

So I was sleeping there, and I’m pretty sure it was around 3 a.m. when my pager went off. And yes, like everybody else, I wanted to be cool; all my friends had a beeper or a pager, so I decided I needed one too. According to my notes, they paged me really early and said they wanted to go fishing, but there wasn’t a clear idea of where we were going to fish. I told them, “Whenever you have a final destination, a solid plan, let me know. By the way, I’m at my sister’s place, so please pick me up because I don’t have a ride.”

It was around 7 a.m. when they finally came over to my sister’s apartment to pick me up. They said they wanted to go to this place called Seven Lakes in New York. Other than telling me “we’re going to Seven Lakes,” there wasn’t much of a plan, and I had never heard of it at the time, so I had no idea what to expect.

We drove around for a while, and I was pretty bored because it felt like we were just driving and not really getting anywhere. Eventually, we reached an area where they said we could probably find a good fishing spot. The place we found was right on the margin of a lake, and it was very muddy along the edges. In order to cast your line and avoid snagging on turtles or whatever else was lurking near the shore, you had to cast really, really far.

It quickly became clear there was nothing there. No bites, nothing. We stayed for a long time anyway. We fished for about 30 minutes from that spot and got nothing. We could see some sunnies, those tiny little fish you see in almost every lake in the Northeast, but we didn’t really want to fish for those.

What we did notice was a tiny island almost smack in the middle of the lake. From where we stood, it looked like the water around the island was deeper and cleaner, and we assumed our chances of finding better fish would improve if we could get there. There was only one problem: we had no way to reach it. No boats, no docks, nothing.

We were bored, and I started bugging my friends. I said, “You know what? We should go to that island.” They started teasing me: “Yeah? And how are we going to get there?” I said, “Why don’t we swim?” I knew it was a crazy idea, but I said it anyway. I guess they were just as bored as I was, and everyone was a little hungry and restless, so eventually they said, “Okay, let’s go. Let’s swim.”

Since I was the one suggesting it, I had to lead the pack and set the example so nobody would chicken out. I took off my socks and shoes, and then my wallet and my pager. I wrapped everything inside my T-shirt and tucked it under the exposed root of a tree near the shore.

Then I started making my way down to the water’s edge. That part of the lake was very shallow, just as we expected, with a lot of branches and weeds, and the water was maybe ten inches deep. Without thinking too much about it, and without being able to see the bottom, I jumped.

When my feet hit the bottom, it felt like I was stepping into slime. I had assumed it was only about ten inches deep, but because I jumped, I sank all the way up to my knees in muck—just mud, slime, and gunk. I knew it was disgusting, but I couldn’t let it show because I didn’t want to scare my friends.

So I said, “All right, come on in.”

One by one, my friends put their things away, including one friend who had a Tamagotchi that was annoying everyone. He was the only one in our group who owned one, and he was completely devoted to it—feeding it, playing with it, cradling it like a baby. We convinced him to leave it under the tree too and told him, “Don’t worry, we’ll be back in time. It’ll be fine.”

We all stepped into the muck. We were completely stuck. We formed a line and pushed and pulled each other because it was really hard to lift our legs—every step came with that sucking sound as the mud tried to keep our feet. We dragged ourselves for a few yards until we finally reached clearer water.

And we did all of this while balancing the bare minimum fishing gear we’d decided to bring: fishing poles, a small Styrofoam container with bait, a tiny tackle box with a couple of lures, some extra line, and a knife.

Once we reached deeper, cleaner water, it was just a matter of floating and swimming toward the island. It didn’t take long to get there. The island itself was mostly rocks with a bit of vegetation in the middle, but there was also a nice sandy beach along one side. That’s where we landed.

We stepped onto the sandy patch, cast our line, and sat down.

But for some reason, I didn’t feel like fishing anymore. I just sat there looking around, and it suddenly hit me how amazing and privileged I was to be in that moment. It was still early, around 9 a.m. The sun was starting to warm everything up. It was summer, after all. Everything was quiet. No cars, no people, just the lake stretching out in every direction, trees along the shore, and water that looked like diluted Coca-Cola in color. It was beautiful.

All at once, I stopped caring about catching anything. I was completely enchanted.

I also had an epiphany: I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so completely disconnected from the world. It was almost like I had run away from home and from civilization. Of course, where I lived there were plenty of open spaces, but I had taken them for granted.

I felt at peace.

Around that time in my life, I had been emotionally involved with a girl much younger than me. She had just gone on a trip to Europe—a gift from her parents for graduating high school. We had dated for a couple of weeks, and then she left. It was the first time I had really opened myself up to someone like that. After she left, it was hard not to think about her all the time, not to feel my heart pounding in my chest whenever she crossed my mind.

That day on the sandy beach of that little island was the first time I felt truly at peace about it. Even when I thought of her and wondered what she might be doing—this was before cell phones and social media, so there was no easy way to stay in touch—I felt calm. I realized how much her absence was affecting me, and, at the same time, how much I had going on in my own life.

I had just graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in science and had zero prospects. No job lined up. No clear path forward. I was worried about the relationship, worried about my future, worried about everything.

The relationship didn’t survive, as it turned out. And I had no idea what was going to happen to me as a fresh graduate with no plan.

But that day on the island is still one of the clearest, strongest memories I have. It had such a powerful impact on me. I remember looking around and seeing that everyone was quiet and lost in their own thoughts. It felt like we were all sharing the same sense of awe. Nobody cared about catching fish anymore. The experience itself was enough.

Eventually, we had to make our way back. We swam across the lake again, but instead of returning to the same spot where we started, we found an easier path to get out. By then it was a really hot day—at least 95°F. We climbed out, muddy and exhausted, and walked back to where we had left our stuff.

We hadn’t caught anything, but the experience was absolutely worth it.

When we reached the tree and dug our belongings out from under the root, we discovered that my friend’s Tamagotchi hadn’t made it. It was dead. At the time, we all thought it was hilarious and gave him a hard time about it on the drive back to our homes and our regular lives.

This specific event is one I’ve actually captured and slightly fictionalized in my book I.C.Q. (named after the instant messaging client from the late 1990s, pronounced “I Seek You,” which is very relevant to the early online dating days portrayed in the plot). The story appears toward the second half of the book, when it shifts into a more epistolary format: the main character is exchanging letters with his girlfriend, who is in Europe, and he tells her about that exact day. It’s chapter 42, if you’re curious.

There was a time when being outdoors and fishing meant a lot to me. It gave me a way to step away from all the troubles, questions, and uncertainties swirling in my mind. I just wanted to share this story. To this day, I still have that letter, along with all the correspondence we feverishly exchanged until the relationship ended. The picture at the top of this post? Those are but a sample of the correspondence from that summer in 1997.

And if you want to know more about that… well, you’ll have to read the book.