The Lake
Not everyone has a cottage on a lake, those that do often take their retreat for granted. It is never the cottage itself, even though the owners call it their dream home, nor the scenic view of the mountains rising up from the valley. Neither is it the water, cold from the winter run-off or the scent of the ever greens. It is none of these things that bring people back year after year.
More than anything, it is the ghosts that bring you back. The memories of each laugh, the quiet moment just after the sun dipped behind the mountain, the way her hair curled after it dried. The water so cold, it chased the air out of your lungs and left goose bumps to melt in the afternoon sun.
It is the memory, not just of still photographs but moments which seem so small when they happen, but grow larger with time. She was in the water, twenty feet away, effortlessly treading the way she did, she was smiling and looking at me.
“We should live here,” I said.
She laughed and ducked under the water pulling herself closer to the boat. She broke the surface and rested her head on her arms on the side of the boat.
“Where would we go to escape from life if we lived here?”
I thought for a moment we may not need to escape life if life was this good, but I knew she was right. Part of the reason this place was so good, was the absence of us. We could be who we wanted to be, not who we really were when we were there. No, it wasn’t about moving to the lake, it was about bringing who we were at the lake back home.
- written by Tyler Fraser
