Out on the deep blue water are lots of cruisers, open-bow
boats, and jet skis. There’s a cigarette
boat noisily zooming about a good way offshore.
A few kayakers and paddle boarders tentatively move about.
The lake has a mild chop with scattered small whitecaps. The rollers hitting the beach are pleasantly
rhythmic and surprisingly loud. They usually
break orderly-like, but now and then a rogue wave arrives and causes an odd and
noisy collision.
I float in the waves a while and wait for the gulls to return. Later they come, having become bored wherever they had been.
The water is clear – perhaps too clear, thanks to small mussels, the zebras and the quaggas, destructive invaders from a world away that
hog too much mico-food. The water is also
warm, 72 degrees a nearby buoy says, surprisingly so given the last two extra-cold
winters.
The water level is high, higher than it has been for years. Some of the dune grass on the small bluff
edging the narrowing beach struggles to maintain footing as the sand collapses beneath from the battering of the relentless waves.
I think of waves in song.
From Hammerstein: “You can’t hear
a sound, not the turn of a leaf, Or the fall of a wave hittin’ the sand / The
tide’s creeping up on the beach like a thief, Afraid to be caught stealing the
land.” From Fields: “I won’t dance, don’t ask me, I won’t dance
madam with you / But oh what you do to me, I’m like an ocean wave that’s bumped
on the shore, I fell so absolutely stumped on the floor.”
A shout from somewhere down the beach cuts through the din
and breaks the trance. I look out to see
the full expanse of the great lake spread out before me, this hot and hazy day.
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