Cool wind, brushed in tones of lake-blue, drifted across the water’s skin, ruffling it into soft ripples that lapped gently at my feet 

Quiet, ancient greetings from a body older than memory. Nearby, a pile of boulderstone, weathered and gray, rose like a relic from the earth. Silent, stoic, just beyond the whispering grass.

And above the treetops, cranes sailed in curved neck grace, wings stretched like parchment pulled tight by wind. And higher still, a bald eagle soared. Wide-eyed and unblinking — its cry a sharp thread through the open sky, gliding free, wild and exacting, scanning the shallows for a glint of silver life beneath the surface.

Out there – were the water blurred into sky, the western dam held its posture — solid, unmoved — a monument to human insistence against time and current

Fishermen drifted quietly, poles in hand, lines whispering down into the cool depths. No hurry. No sound but the hush of breeze and the language of water.

There, in that moment, I forgot myself.

No past, no future. Just the quiet hush.
Just the stillness.
Just the lake.