The lake is cold but the water clear. In another day we will see a flock of loons, at least fifteen of them, moving west like shadows across the surface. That’s how quiet it is here, how safe. All along the shoreline the trees boast their last show in a stretch of colors: greens that fade into rust and gold. Leaves lit up (or “Lit,” my son might say). Then gone. But not completely. When I walk the woods, elsewhere in thought, I have to remind myself again and again to look up, look out, look down, so that I see all is not lost, just temporarily scattered. And for a moment, what is above me is also below, forming a soft cushion. A shelter from whatever it is that pulled me away in the first place.
“I am here to write and to teach, and it is the writing I mull over…while I look out toward the still, blue lake, while I feel the warmth of the sunlight and the cool of the tree shadow on my face, on my shoulders. I wind through the woods and the marshes and watch for deer, for their horizontal movement amidst this vertical landscape. I can feel their presence, even when I can’t see them, these deer. They are like an idea in the making: There. Close. There.”
