MISQUAH — To the Editor: I have written before about the proper wave from a boat, and I will not repeat the entire argument, as longtime readers know my position and have, some of them, told me so. But for the newcomers, and there are newcomers every June: the proper wave is a lift of the hand off the wheel, two fingers or the flat palm, given whether or not you know the other party, and given first by whoever sees the other first. It is not the whole arm. The whole arm is for emergencies and for people who have something to prove and have not yet learned that out here, nobody is keeping the kind of score they think. The speed of your boat is negotiable, within reason and the no-wake zones. The wave is not negotiable. The wave is the rent you pay to be on the water with the rest of us.

A wave costs you nothing and says the only thing that needs saying on a lake, which is: I see you, we are both out here, this water is ours together and we are going to behave like it. I have given that wave to people I have feuded with for thirty years over fence lines and boat lifts and one memorable business with a duck blind. You wave first and you argue later, if you must argue at all. That is the order of operations, and a man who reverses it — who withholds a wave to make a point — has misunderstood the lake, and probably a few other things besides.

I am told the paper intends to mention that I held a corner of the banner Saturday at the parade. Fine. Mention it. I will say only this much about it, and then I am genuinely done: a person waves at his neighbors from the boat, and a person holds the corner on the land, and it is the same wave, performed standing still. It says the same thing. I see you. We are both out here. This is ours. That is the whole of my philosophy on waving and, if you want to know, on most things, and it is considerably more than I planned to commit to print this week. — Lloyd Bunde, Misquah