It is so quiet today… Saturday…early afternoon. I’m sitting looking out at the lake…almost no wind…just a light ripple on the water. The clouds are starting to move in but it’s been deliciously sunny and warm all morning. The only sounds I hear are distant highway sounds…hardly even a voice. No music, no sea-doos, no splashing and laughing…in short, none of the normal noises. Just the rocking of the dock and the occasional birdsong. 

For a month now I’ve been watching the lake rise…watching anchored buoys slowly being pulled under…watching the wall at the bottom of the property disintegrate, the vertical stone becoming a slope. Every day there is some new bit of flotsam making it’s way to the end of the wind…and then back again. There are full size logs, all kinds of crap and a few whole sections of dock. 

On top of that, because of the late Spring, all manner of plant life is rushing to catch up and the world is covered in pollen. The shoreline is green with it, the deck furniture needs to be brushed off every day and the cars look like they’ve been raced through a pale pea-green desert. 

So no one is coming to the lake…which means I have it all to myself on this warm, still, Saturday afternoon. It is hard to believe that some of the cottages already have water at the doorstep… just waiting for a stiff westerly to blow into the living room. 

We’re good here, about six feet higher than the current water level…those who know about such things tell us that another 10-12 centimetre rise is all we should expect. 

The thing is, the flooding has been so undramatic. No rushing water, no dams bursting, no people scrambling for their lives…just this slow, relentless, utterly benign wet mass threatening to swallow our stuff… and there’s nothing, short of building a wall of sandbags, that we can do about it. Now, as I’ve said, I’m not among those who have to sand bag and I’m ever-so-happy to say so. I get to watch and marvel at the force and the power of these billions and trillions of gallons of water…this one single thing…an infinite attraction of molecules. 

I love it, of course, the lake in all it’s forms. I’ve always thought I might live by the water one day. They tell me I’m a Cancer, so it’s perfectly natural. 

I could go for a swim…might be cold though…all those icy torrents tumbling from the mountains into my private lake………. 

So… that’s how it is here today… as you can see I’m slipping in and out of reveries…quite perfect for a still Saturday afternoon, don’t you think? Especially considering I have this whole beautiful lake all to myself. 

Well…I’ll share with my girl of course…what fun would it be otherwise?