maiden

On the water, the breeze picked up and did away with the sticky summer heat left in the wake of last night’s storms and the bugs clinging to the shoreline and dried my sweat slick skin. I circumnavigated the tail end of the lake over about an hour, nosing around endless boat lifts and skinny docks, past construction sites and early morning fisherman perched on the rip-rap along the road, sliding through thick mazes of reeds where I lost sight of the shore on all sides and found myself serenaded by an invisible choir of birds hidden in the thick green tangle. My arms cramped up after a while, but then loosened and I found my rhythm and was startled by the quick progress my little boat made around the shoreline.

This afternoon, Pete and I went exploring up north a ways, trying to find a little state park surrounded by cornfields with a much less developed looking lake nestled in the middle. It was so undeveloped that there were no signs, and we circled around for ages on unmarked gravel roads trying to find the water. When we finally did, it was past the flat grass strip advertizing itself as the local municipal airport. The narrow, overgrown cement-paved road to the boat ramp looked like something from the set of a post apocalyptic b-movie. We found most of the shoreline we could see clear of houses and docks, and the boat ramp looks like it hasn’t been used all season. We didn’t see a single boat on the lake itself. Driving through the endless maze of cornfield grid, I had begun to despair that this would be worth the drive up from town. But with the green of shoreline, diving birds and empty flat water beckoning, I think it might be after all.