A Lesson From An Unknown Lake

It didn’t look like much of a lake. In fact, if I had not looked up and through the trees and my tears, I might have missed it.

To reach its edge of this unknown lake, I had to make a trail.

On the shore of that unknown lake I drowned in my grief.

I sank back down into the hard memories of the past several years.

That morning I needed to be alone, to get away, to sort things through, to not think.

To just walk.

With the collar of my jacket pulled up tight and zipped to my chin, shoulders hunched and head down against the cold, and my eyes only on the next step I had been trudging in anguished pain with labored breath and balled fists.

My heart, soul, and mind were drowning in the cold waves of anger and despair.

I clenched my teeth so hard that my jaw hurt.

A profound revulsion at how it was possible my world could have shattered hammered through my being as the frozen mud on the trail crunched underfoot.

That’s when I found the lake.

Snow was forecasted, but for now the big pond’s far shoreline reflected the frozen, leafless, bare branches of trees and brush.

Like my hard and angry thoughts, the skeletal fingers of that far side appeared hard and angry.

The lake’s black surface reflected my black mood.

Repeatedly using the heel of my boot, I smashed and freed a large rock.

Defiantly I threw it as far as I could into the placid surface.

I wanted that peaceful lake to be as disturbed and troubled and hurt as I was.

Moments later, the ripples caused by the stone’s splash lapped the shore where I stood.

All returned to as it was.

In silence, the water-reflected crystallized brush and trees on the far shore became gloriously resplendent in the rays of the rising sun as it warmed the scene.

Peace and serenity and light filled the little lake with no name.

As they did me.