How Lovely the Loneliness of a Wild Lake
It was afternoon, unusually warm for October, and the breeze off Lake Erie carried the familiar mix of freshness and quiet strength. The kind of breeze that tousles your hair and smells faintly of sand, fish, and driftwood. I stood on a rocky stretch of an empty beach, listening to the rhythmic crash of the waves and the soft clicking of smooth stones as the water rolled in and out. The lake looked like the ocean that day, restless and bright; its waves crowned with white foam that shimmered in the sun.
Scattered among the rocks were fallen leaves, mostly orange with a few flashes of red, and more floated in the water just beyond the shore. What caught my eye was how the ones in the waves seemed to stay suspended in place. They weren’t being carried in or drawn away- just hovering there, caught between motion and stillness, as if time itself had taken a breath and stopped to watch.
It brought back memories of when my kids were young and we’d grate bright crayons onto wax paper, pressing them gently beneath a warm iron. The colors would soften and swirl without fully melting; vivid, suspended, beautiful. Blending just enough to glow, but not enough to lose themselves. That’s what the lake looked like: color and light held perfectly in motion.
As I stood there in that warm October wind, I thought about how life holds moments like that, too- times that don’t move forward or fade away, but simply stay with us. Quiet, glowing reminders that beauty doesn’t always need to go anywhere to mean something.
