lake_erie ovenbird They scream when the waves reach their feet, though the water is warm for a lake so huge. I tell them the name of this ancient body: Erie. No, not eerie, though it’s sometimes that too, mist cloaked and inscrutable. At a maximum of 210 feet deep it’s the shallowest of the Great Lakes, but not in the least tame. It’s prone to tantrums of lightning and waves and churning surf that whip up from the ten thousand square kilometers of water sloshing in its belly. Its name means “long tail” in Iroquois, and it wraps itself around our ankles like a cat, burying our toes into the pebbly sand. When I was young I threw myself into its arms and let it crash over my head. My brother and I pretended to be dolphins leaping over each incoming crest. “It’s not choppy! It’s not choppy!” we would yell in defiance of the evidence: waves that would roll us under as we rode them to the wide beach, sending sand into every crevice of our bodies, leaving us to find grit for days in unexpected places. My own children seem far less keen to baptize themselves in Erie’s font. The water is calm today but they won’t go in past their knees. They can’t be enticed to swim and they ask to go home or have ice cream or dinner. I’m tired of their demands and truncated attention spans. I stare sullenly into the distance. There’s a couple fifty feet from the shore, just their head and shoulders rising from the rippling surface, like two small islands. They’re old and alone, no children or grandchildren splashing nearby. Their bodies are clay, kneaded into softness by time and they stand close together while the whole lake moves around them, staring into each other’s eyes as if enchanted by the sound of their own names arising from a deep and enduring love. For a moment they are the sun, and the whole world turns around them. May we all be so lucky. May we all find ourselves wet from birth, wounded and known, willing to give ourselves over to the forces that carry us—the wonder of waves, the thrill of a storm, the bliss of a love that bends time out of shape and leaves us shaking the water of Lake Erie from the silvered fall of our hair. 260724 what's it to you? who go blather from