The pontoon boat, bearing coolers of food and drink plus sweaty bathing-suit clad adults and children munching on chips, slid across the brown-gray waters of Lake Lookout. The boat slipped into a shoal, a barely-there sandbar where the children jumped off into the waist-high water as adults waded over to unload the coolers for a communal Fourth of July cookout.

Oppressively hot when still, the boat, thankfully, moved back into the lake and resumed a meandering tour.

Life on a major holiday on Lake Lookout, about halfway between Hickory and Statesville, was comatose by comparison to the buzz-sawing jet skis and power boats thrashing the waters of nearby Lake Norman. There were no water skiers, and little noise broke the quiet. Lookout also lacked Norman’s NASCAR mansions, replete with elevators.

A woman aboard pointed, murmuring approval of a new A-frame, clad in stained cedar, that could have been a mountain chalet. “That’s nice,” she affirmed. It reminded her of the understated family places on lakes she and her family knew in upstate New York.

Others nodded.

Such places, where working people could get a toe — or a fishing line, or a pontoon boat — in the water — are the holy grail of vacationers.

Her neighbor, a retired community college instructor, had spent several years fixing up his Lookout cottage. “He’s at it all the time,” she said. “Works hard. It’s his kid’s inheritance.” She had bought her own place, a rustic fisherman’s cabin, before things “got so crazy.”

Little by little, she was working to make it a home. Adapting to a one-bedroom, one-bath place. “The water is why I’m here.”

The boat owner had bought-in a decade before the market pushed it out of reach. He’d since invested as much as it cost, but his children loved it. They talked about how much they liked the simplicity and quiet, and bemoaned certain sections, where the affluent were building bigger, fancier homes.

“I don’t want it to change,” the woman said quietly.

As the pontoon continued, the boat owner suddenly slowed to a stop. In one of the busiest channels and the most developed section of the lake, another pontoon boat passed and, nearby, a few fishermen cast lines from a Jon boat. He pointed to the very top of a power line.

The New York woman lowered her voice. “The eagles.”

And there they were. One suddenly swooped down into a nest.

Nobody spoke; nobody needed to mention the symbolism: Fourth of July. Bald eagles in the wild.

Opposite their nest, someone had stacked three pallets of fireworks, enough for a commercial fireworks show. More fireworks than anyone on board had ever seen.

“Here?” the woman suddenly said. “So many. That’ll make an awful racket.”

Her face fell. “I worry about my dogs. They are petrified of fireworks.”

Somebody ventured, “You could commit the perfect crime during a racket like that.”

All eyes returned to the eagles’ nest.

Eagles soon to be subjected to a violent blast of fireworks.

The woman exhaled. The soaring of wings, the exhilarating sensation of only moments earlier, seemed ruined.

“I hope they come back next year,” someone muttered.

The boat bobbed over a gentle wake as the boat owner navigated back to drop us before returning to the sand bar. The eagles grew smaller and smaller until invisible.

Silence swallowed the boat. Sweat trickled down faces. Collectively, we struggled to shake off a disquieting mood. 

Nearing the woman’s dock, only the sound of waves gently slapping the pier beneath the silent, sheltering pines. “I have cold drinks,” she said, as an old, shaggy dog lumbered down to greet us, his tongue hanging, panting.

“Fireworks got real bad last year,” she added, staring sadly as she disembarked before opening her arms to give him a hug. “I’ll stay with him.”

Sharp reverberations would pierce the night across this and other lakes, across parklands and the most remote of places. Refracting off the rooftops of the hamlets, towns and cities of a fitful nation.

As contrails of explosives still lit the sky, a gibbous waning moon rose at midnight.

It is said that those born under such a moon are attuned to the natural world, yet feel as if they never quite belong.