Lake Life

If you want to study the changing seasons, live on a lake.

Summer sunsets land differently from Wintertime sunsets, and the sky seems thinner when it is cold. Clouds often are gray in the winter, but perhaps that is a trick of the eye...no green leaves or blue water to serve as a counterpoint.

In the summertime, the leaves cushion sounds from passing trains and muffle the cheers of baseball fans at the distant park.

Ice—at first just a glaze and then thick and dark—turns the lake into an artist’s canvas with paw prints sometimes visible after a fresh snowfall. Coyote? Fox?

And autumn is its own beast. Canada Geese still on the water—even in the middle of the night—and small animals beginning to search for safe harbor in the coming winter.

Springtime? April and May clouds—magnificent popcorn white against clear blue—reflect themselves in the water. From sunrise to sunset, color peeks out. Cormorants—sleekly black—land on the water and then submerge, only to rise at a point far distant from their initial dive. The Heron is easier to see. Bass and carp nibble at the edge of the lake. Everything is beginning again.

As I write this reflection, it is December. The water looks like molten mercury—shining and undulating with the brisk breeze. Trees are barren. Everything is waiting for the snow.