Ducks. What do we know about them? They swim in lakes, and even in the middle of winter we see them floating on the surface with freezing air temperatures. I found out that ducks come in 30 different breeds, and some are much more colorful than others.

Several years ago, I was fishing during an early morning in Bear Creek lakes when out of the fog a squadron of about 15 Canada geese came across the lake from my right, led by a loud honking general leading its troops. From the left appeared a single file of ducks swimming straight into the path of the geese. The ducks swam right through the squadron. They were making a statement. “This is our lake, too.”

I have never hunted ducks, but I met a duck hunter last year. That is to say, the subject matter came through a conversation with Matt while he and I watched our sons play club baseball for Lehigh University at the Regional postseason tournament held in New Jersey. We had spoken at previous games, but I got to know him better during the Regionals and at the Club Baseball World Series played in Butler last May.

He does what I have read about duck hunting: Gets in his dark brown duck boat and navigates his way into the reeds and weeds of Oneida Lake in upstate New York that he knows as well as the names of his daughter and son. Once he stops his boat, he hunkers down with a duck call in mouth and a gun in hand.

“Oneida Lake?” I said while we watched Lehigh defeat Rowan University to win the Regionals. My lady friend had booked a four-day getaway up there for us in late August.

Matt’s eyes lit up when I told him we were renting a place on a street in Brewerton where he grew up, which is just a short drive from his current house on the lake. We agreed to meet up.

Three months later we honored the agreement. “Let me pick you up in my boat and we’ll go across the lake to a restaurant on the water,” he texted.

Now there’s something we could not pass up. Sharon and I have never gone out to dinner on a boat. Matt sent me a picture of his duck boat that he used for hunting.

“I’ll see you guys at dockside,” he texted. “Our duck boats up here aren’t like the ones they have in Boston.”

We pushed that comment aside, thinking that he really wasn’t going to pick us up in the same boat he uses to hunt for ducks. Sure enough, at the agreed upon time, his duck boat came motoring up to the dock.

What was an unexpected vehicle of water transportation carried us to the very best evening we could have ever hoped to have. With Matt at the wheel and his wife, daughter and us in tow, we splashed across the 21-mile-long lake to our eatery, where we tied up to their dock. For a moment I thought Matt was a cowboy in the Old West tying up his horse to a hitching post in front of a saloon.

Dinner was perfect. I ate a delicious burger and had a few drinks. For that matter, I could have eaten a cauliflower salad (which I would never do) and with my lady by my side and good friends across the table and the ambience of the lake surrounding us, the salad would have tasted like lobster.

Back upon the boat we stepped for our moonlight cruise to our Brewerton rental house. When I say moonlight, we traversed the water under a post-eclipse full moon situated in a jet-black sky speckled with stars that sparkled like diamonds that lit the soft summer waves like a pathway to heaven.

We returned home from New York holding onto a special memory that we’ll talk about to our families and friends for years to come. I wondered about how big the universe is. We were just a pinhead-sized dot on a massive lake; nevertheless, what a small world we really live in.

Two fathers brought together from different states because of their love for their sons and for the game of baseball began a friendship on a cold spring early morning at a field in New Jersey that grew stronger on a duck boat during a warm summer night upon a lake in New York.

I believe that some of the people we meet in life is not by coincidence but by design of the same designer of the universe. I was supposed to meet Matt. My son, a pitcher, was supposed to pitch to his son, a catcher, and they were supposed to go to Lehigh University, albeit for different reasons.

I was supposed to write a book that Matt would read. My lady friend was supposed to book a vacation to his hometown because we were supposed to enjoy a wonderful evening with his family.

There are more “supposed to be” things. The weather was supposed to be perfect for our excursion across a lake that is supposed to touch the shores of Matt’s backyard where he harbors his duck boat.

As we tied up at the restaurant near yacht-sized power boats and pontoon boats that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, we were supposed to travel in a duck boat, Matt’s comfy couch on the water. I’m forever grateful that our time spent together was not supposed to happen in any other way.

Like I said, I’m not a duck hunter, but I do like to eat duck and often order it in restaurants when I see it on the menu. And I know for certain that the next time I take a bite of this waterfowl, I will think of my friend Matt and the incredible night he gave us on an unforgettable trip across beautiful Oneida Lake in his duck boat.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com