DOWN BY THE LAKE

Today, I decided to expand my horizons by walking along the waterfront trail.  I've lived near this town for thirty years, but have never walked this section of shoreline.  Now that its hunting season, and I need a dryish place to start breaking in my new boots, (I'm not kidding about Camino III), it seemed like a good choice.

I wasn't expecting much.  It was a gloomy morning, and the pink tinge out over the island portended rain.  Still, I took the camera with me because you never can tell what you might see.

As I set out, words like spare and sere were in my head.  From the cold grey prison walls, to the hidden sun gleaming  bleakly off the aluminum surfaces of  a sculpture at the marina,  to the lake, already looking like molten lead, as it does when you just know its nearly gelid; everything spoke of limitation, of decline. I walked past the sometimes spooky, reputedly haunted, and empty asylum, hoping for at least a frisson.  But instead I saw a broken window transformed into a darkly beautiful mirror.

Form and texture have become pre-eminent, and everything is quite still. 

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 This makes the colour that is left, wet green algae, duck feathers of impossible brilliance, garlands of  persimmon- hued bittersweet, all the more precious. 

 A strangely coloured squirrel stands out against the grey water.  We have black and grey squirrels aplenty, but sometimes interbreeding produces a redhead!

 The view out to the Island is like a Japanese meditation garden, and I could stand and look at it for a long time.