1. Two Deep Lakes
The first lake in the chain was deep.
Mimi used to warn us about the drop-off — how the lake was a half-mile deep. It was her way of saying, “Don’t swim out too deep today.” This was in keeping with how she would warn us about other hazards of that place on the hill in the woods by the lake. For example, about the quicksand in the woods. Just to the south, beyond the soft, green wall of juvenile White Pines, the hill descended to a spring with deceptively shallow water and black muck all around. Her quicksand admonishments were her way of saying, “Don’t walk across that log in the bog lest you fall in and get stuck.”
But I digress.
The first lake in the chain was deep. So was the third. Although the third lake was smaller than the first and packed all around with cottages. It had a resort-y feel. The first felt a bit more like a place in the wilderness.
2. The Second Lake
The second lake was shallow.
As you paddled out of the channel connecting the first lake to the second and gazed over the side at the gradually receding lake bottom, the channel weeds thinned leaving nothing but clear sand.
There was no drop-off here. The clear water took on a pea-green cast. Of the five lakes in the chain, this one had a personality all its own. Away from shore, the bottom was always in sight, although just beyond reach of your paddle should you push it downward.
This second lake was larger than the third but smaller than the first. It was not a long distance across. And on that far side there was a steep hill that rose from sandy shallows that were well suited for splashing. You could pull your canoe up and loosely tie it to the trunk of a fallen tree after the turtles had scattered.
3. A Gathering Place
From the shore, you could scramble up a steep path to a clearing on a ridge that separated that lake from the third. In the clearing there were fallen tree trunks arranged in a circle around what was clearly a place where campers would gather around a fire. You could imagine the ghost stories they would have told to the flickering flames. Or the songs sung in the night. You could rub your fingers on the initials carved into those logs of some of those story-tellers and singers.
It would have been a wonderful place to gather at night.
And it was a wonderful place to sit during the day. A breeze blew thru the leaves, coming up off the pea-green water. Surrounding the logs around the fire pit, there were great Beech trees with grey trunks that ascended beyond a canopy of young maples and oaks. The light from the summer sun would dance on the Beech leaves. The breeze whispered to you: “Sit and listen.”
We went there often to do just that.
4. Today
Years later, they raised the level of the water in the lakes. It made for better water skiing in that second lake. The lake no longer has that pea-green personality.
And the Beech trees are gone — one winter a horrible storm blew through and toppled every one of them. The hill is still there of course. But the sandy shore is no longer so shallow. The path up the hill is grown over.
Alas, the gathering place is no longer quite what it once was.
