Lakeside Revisited

Unlike most days where I visit my neighborhood lake and see vibrant colors gleaming off of its surface and ripples indicative of fish, today the lake is different. A thick, opaque sheet of blue ice covers the whole of it and the movements I am so accustomed to have ceased. The water is motionless and resembles frosted glass. 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 beneath is still in motion yet because of the thick sheet of ice I feel I have been left blinded. “If I can’t see these minutiae, I still try to keep my eyes open” because I don’t know just 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 that blocks us from seeing below “we miss a great deal because we perceive only things on our own scale.” For example, how does the view of the fish differ from ours? On their scale the ice blocks sunlight, their source of warmth, and is most likely vexing, yet to us the ice is fun and deceivingly 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. I actually venture briefly 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! It is astounding to think that water has so many forms. “I reel in confusion; I don’t understand what I see.” How does this 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 of course must freeze gradually with some parts freezing before others and blocking the moving water ever so steadily until at last every droplet 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 experience a realization 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.’” I agree with Annie Dillard and too feel that a way to remove our brain’s filters must be removed. 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.
Originally published Jan 18th, 2010