Lily Pads
FIELD NOTE No. 017I didn't realize I missed lily pads.
Growing up, a 9.9 horsepower outboard wasn't unusual.
Rowboats were everywhere.
Two-stroke smokers idled across the lake.
Pontoon boats were slow, square, and looked ten years old the day they left the marina.
Today the boats are different.
Four-stroke fuel injection.
Triple pontoons.
Wake boats carrying thousands of pounds of ballast.
Twin outboards.
Bigger.
Faster.
Heavier.
They're doing exactly what they were built to do.
But somewhere along the way, the lily pads quietly disappeared.
Not all at once.
Just a little less every summer.
The other day I found a place that hadn't changed much.
You park along a dirt road, back your trailer beside a bridge culvert, and idle through a narrow creek.
The creek opens into a chain of marsh lakes where the shoreline is too wet for big houses and too wild for seawalls.
The lily pads were everywhere.
Not because a single lily pad is remarkable.
Because an entire lake covered in them is.
They weren't clinging to the shoreline.
They had claimed the lake.
Reaching into water deep enough to remind me they weren't fighting the waves anymore.
Before I realized I was smiling...
I realized why.
The lake wasn't asking to entertain me.
It simply existed.
Dragonflies.
Marsh grass.
Pads drifting in the breeze.
Bluegills tucked underneath.
Carp the size of ponies.
The quiet that comes when the water is allowed to stay a little wild.
Sometimes you don't realize what you've lost until you accidentally find it again.
Maybe that's why noticing matters.
Not to stop the world from changing.
Just to remember what it looked like before it did.
— Esker