The Lake

There is no place quite as amazing or intriguing as the lake at night.  In the summer of sophomore year, the only important thing was to pull in experience and to touch, taste, feel, and be alive.  Lake Alvin was a mucky lake if you waited too long in the summer to visit.  During the high noon hour an annoyed, sweaty college student sat at the entrance of our Midwest paradise, demanding money for entrance.  This left daytime lake visits to Wall Lake, more populous and at a different end of town.  When the burning sun sank below the horizon and traded shifts with the gleaming lunar orb, the rules were changed in our youthful perception.  Lake Alvin warped into a secret retreat, more difficult to find in the black cloak of nightfall.  The lake-keeper had left, and the shore deserted enough to frolic in the cool sand and even cooler water.  The moon-lit diamonds glittered across the lake on the crystal clear nights.

We lived the most those nights--like when we lay close to shore half in the water, spouting out philosophy and salting the lake with tears, and bringing it to life with laughter.  There were no battles ahead, no worries behind, but only a drunk happiness life can gift wrap for you.  For one summer, love would live freely, not in the name of romance and unruly boys, but within the girls who understood your feminine confusion.  The end of those nights brought about storm weather and clouds--a looming dark forecast of a change in the weather.  We knew it wouldn't live in the cold dead winter, and eventually it died of old age.  If that was happiness tasted, it was certainly sweet.  But all else aside I'm dying to live the lake life we had with each other.  But the memory is a tangerine, as I know I'll never taste it again, an intangible moment.