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Category: water

Time for Sun

Time for Sun

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What a difference the sun makes. It’s cold, slightly above freezing, a steady breeze blowing off the lake. But the day is friendly, not the alien weather of yesterday, which was inhospitable to humans.

I say this from experience, after first rambling along the shore and then trudging up to the ridge, where the combination of exertion and distance from the lake made the temperature almost bearable.

Today there are sounds of life, some hammering next door, an occasional car engine. It’s time for me to go outside — if for no other reason than to know how good it feels to come back in! 

Lake Monroe

Lake Monroe

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I’m writing from a cottage in Indiana as the wind whips whitecaps in the lake and sends the wind chimes into overdrive.

I’ve come here for years but never in the winter, never when the water opened up before me on three sides, never with a sky so leaden and gray. 

It’s a cozy place to hang out for a couple of days. And I’ve figured out how to create a “personal hotspot” to post these words.

Here, in a “frame,” is Lake Monroe, snapped from inside, the only place to be today.

Hidden Pond

Hidden Pond

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Today I walked down an old section of Hunter’s Valley Road to twin stone pillars flanking a trail. A few hundred feet down a muddy path I came to a grove of bamboo so thick that light barely penetrated the thicket. It rained hard last night and everything was drenched. Moisture beaded up at the ends of the bamboo fronds and dripped on me as I shoved my way through the foliage.

Once into the enclosure I marveled at the space. A pond, completely hidden from view, surrounded on three sides by bamboo and on the other by banked rows of rhododendrons and azaleas. Fallen leaves and lily pads dotted the surface, and the great shaggy bamboo, weighted by water, hung its head in the pool.

What is it about a hidden garden we find so appealing? Is it the incongruity of something outside and in the open but still out of sight? Or is it the feeling that it gives us, one of enclosure and safety. Whatever the explanation, the place had a magical effect on me; it calmed me, slowed me, made me want to stay.