Lakeside

Usually when I visit my neighborhood’s lake the water is full of vibrant life and movement, but today it is the opposite. A thick, opaque sheet of ice covers almost the whole of it and the movements I am so used to have ceased. The water that remains at the surface almost grasping for sunlight is motionless and resembles the frosty glass all around it. I see no fish stirring, hear no sound of insects buzzing, but I do feel the icy wind blowing steadily across the lake surface. However, I have just arrived and have yet to realize that “It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open.” In my mind I know that the fish have not left the lake and that the water is still in motion just as it has always been yet because of the thick sheet of ice I have been blinded. “If I can’t see these minutiae, I still try to keep my eyes open” because I don’t know what clues to look for in this weather to spot the evidence that life remains. I often think that just like this sheet of ice over water that blocks us from seeing in “We miss a great deal because we perceive only things on our own scale.” For example, what do the fish in the water think? On their scale the ice blocks sunlight, their source of warmth, and is most likely vexing, yet to us the ice is fun and beautiful allowing us to forget how treacherous it can be if we were to fall in and join our fishy friends. “Still, a great deal of light falls on everything” and I would have to guess that they find ways to keep warm under the ice since entire fish populations don’t just die out during winter. I actually venture onto the ice, near the shore of course, to see how thick it is and astoundingly, especially for Georgia, the ice is over two inches thick over open water and is frozen to the bottom near the edges. It is astounding to think that water has so many forms. “I reel in confusion; I don’t understand what I see.” How does moving water freeze? When I recall past years I have seen frozen waterfalls but I never understood how water plummeting through the air could freeze in place. It must freeze gradually. With some parts freezing before others and blocking the moving water ever so steadily until at last every droplet of water on the surface freezes. “I had been a bell my whole life and, and never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck.” Realizations are strange things. How can they exist? For a person to realize something the sums of the whole must have always been there, and therefore, that person actually learned nothing and yet feels as if a great hidden truth has been revealed. “…sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: ‘This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.’” Annie Dillard, I could not agree more that a way to remove these filters must be discovered. As a realist this is one ultimate goal I always keep in mind, see the world as it truly is, not as you want it to be.

Quotes from: Dillard, Annie. "Seeing." Seeing and Writing. Eds. Donald and Christina McQuade. Bedford, 2007. Print 108-117.