When "imagine" isn't enough

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."

- Henry David Thoreau

I can only imagine what it’s like now, this half-acre by the lake that we once called ours.

Glen Lake frozen, though not thoroughly.  That should come this month.

The trees surrounding the lake bare and brown except for the deep greens of the pines and cedars.

Zach at the cottage ... January 2010.

And quiet … so quiet. The ducks and geese on hiatus. Seagulls still fly, of course, but they’re less vocal, rendered stiff by the Michigan cold.  Even the howling coyotes are burrowed deep, seeking added warmth. 

A few winter birds might chirp amid the undergrowth. But they will be muffled by breezes born on big Lake Michigan that dance and skip across the smaller Glen.

These nights, when I awake at 3 or 4 a.m. in my Kansas City bed to the worries of business, I flee to this spot … to seek its solace and comfort.  In my mind I sit on the ground where once sat the cottage.   I lean back on my arms, stretch out my legs.  And I listen … to the breezes, the chirps.  And I take in fully the immense blue sky that is anchored both to the green-peppered hills and to the sheer white of the lake’s ice below.

Only then, it seems, can I find sleep again.

I can only imagine, because we’ve not returned since the cottage was torn down last fall.  We hear that the work was done quickly and expertly.  The neighbors, the Hansons, kindly asked the crews to spare some of the interior ash panels.  I’ll go up to retrieve them soon – to then fashion them into picture frames for the siblings to fill with their favorite lake-time photos.

It’s hard to describe the yearning one has for being by a Northern lake. To see it, smell it … to hear it.  For me, the combination brings a powerful clarity of mind and purpose. 

Scarcity breeds demand, of course.  Sitting high and dry in Kansas invites thoughts of shimmering blue places. So would a life lived year-round by water dampen the fever?  

I think not much.  

Sure, for most of us, no matter where we live, the day-to-day demands of existence separate us from Nature in ways unnatural.  So when work is done, we find ourselves seeking a slice of the outdoors to replenish ourselves.  We flee to porches and decks, backyards and grills, nature trails and parks.

It’s there where we try to regain the balance.

But imagine life on a Michigan lake, especially in the warmer months.  Yep, work continues.  But when work is done, Nature welcomes you not with a slice but a full banquet.  Ducks, geese, coyote, but also beaver, the wily raccoon, loons, many deer, even the feared cougar. 

Lake Michigan below a frozen dune.

And the winds … breezes some days, but on others, a forceful gale that churns the blue waters into frothy green rows, the waves crashing ashore like small cracks of thunder.      

And, at dusk, a celestial beauty that forces you to reconsider your time spent at work, and whether its purpose measures up to the balancing force you just witnessed.

Thoreau reveled in nature and defined his purpose accordingly, most notably with his famous stay at Walden Pond.

“Nature is full of genius,” he wrote, “full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”

If that’s true – and I believe it is – then it explains the ache we seem to feel for Up North, where native brilliance is so abundant, the call of the wild so incredibly strong.

And so we ponder ….

Perhaps “imagine” isn’t enough.