The Lake Doesn’t Know It’s A Beach
FIELD NOTE No. 018Fresh water.
Sand.
Grass.
Forest.
On a day like this, Lake Michigan looks accommodating.
Warm sand. Beach grass moving in the breeze. Blue water running all the way to the horizon.
It looks like it was put here for summer.
It wasn’t.
This water has swallowed ships.
Storms have turned it from postcard blue into something generations of sailors learned to respect.
Currents move beneath swimmers standing on beaches that looked perfectly harmless from the parking lot.
The lake strengthens thunderstorms.
A few months from now, cold air will cross the same open water and bury towns beneath bands of lake-effect snow.
It creates weather.
Moves sand.
Builds dunes.
Takes them apart.
Then August comes.
The water settles.
Kids dig holes in the sand.
Someone unfolds a chair.
Someone complains that the cooler is too far away.
And this enormous body of freshwater goes back to looking like a nice place for a swim.
Maybe that’s the part worth noticing.
We like the outdoors when it behaves.
When the water is blue.
When the wind is light.
When the temperature is right.
When nature provides the experience we drove there expecting.
But none of this was built for us.
The storms, the shipwrecks, the dunes, the snow, the currents and the perfect summer afternoons are all expressions of the same place.
Today it happens to be blue water, warm sand and grass moving in the wind.
Enjoy it.
The lake owes you nothing.
— Esker