Lakeshore

You load yourself up with beauty

then you bring that out in your art.

Piet Oudolf

We find ourselves in amongst a gallery of scrub brush, our morning trio transformed into a clump of stalks undulating in the breeze. The hawk circles back a second time and, as it banks out over the lake, it releases  a prehistoric complaint, proving that how you feel inside rarely lines up with the effect your physical presence has on the environment surrounding it. We’re approaching the end of June, only two days left before we head home. Within the hour it will become warm. A butterfly flits inside a miniature forest of swamp grass—a single lily only a day away from uttering its name. Hopping from treetop to treetop, a pair of crows shadow our path, letting us know we’ve entered their zone and should soon be leaving it. The tinkle of a bell allows bikers to pass us on the left. Up ahead a runner and her dog bob up and down. The trail empty on the way out fills with recreational use on the way back. We’ve come just before the lake’s summer season, so swims are more brief dips off the dock. The blueline remains, windy day or calm, marking where sandbar ends and where lake becomes deep and cold. The job of art is to make you see things you haven’t noticed, make anew the things you have, or both. Which means a good walk should take the pace of your abiding attention. Or so it seems for this little group we’ve become, this morning, here on the walking path along the lakeshore.

                                                                                                for MH & EC