Dirty Water and the Road Most Taken

The idea of getting out of bed and making my way over to the lake wasn’t appealing as I woke up this morning, but as I rolled out of bed I knew that it had to be done. Throwing on a coat so that I could handle the nip of the fresh morning wind, I hopped in my car and made my way down to the lake. As I pulled up, I noticed something that I haden’t seen in my previous two journeys to the lake: a dirty, mucky surface covering the brown depths of the water below.

I’m still not quite sure what caused this, as the new color was very distinct from anything I had seen at the lake before. It’s been raining these past few days on and off again, and my best guess is the combination of runoff and water movement swirling up minerals in the water. Regardless, it was an interesting new viewpoint of the lake, and it accompanied me as I continued my journey around the outer edge. If I’m being honest, I much prefer the calm, deep blue surface that is characteristic of the lake, and hopefully it will have returned to normal by my next visit. Having already examined the beach part of the lake’s outer rim in one of my previous blog posts, I chose to begin walking down the prominant gravel path just to the left of the lake from my perspective, following it to the edge of the woods.

While walking leisurely, I noticed the two pipes running from the lake to a rock system on the other side of the path. At first glance, I figured two things: these were drainage pipes, and they were man-made. Upon returning to my house after my visit to the lake, I did some further research into the pipes, and I’m pretty sure that this is a french drain system, where the drainage is spilled out into the rock field, filtering it and stopping oversaturation of the soil below the rocks. Although the drain does provide a blemish in the otherwise-clean, in my opinion, landscape near the lake, it undoubtably serves an important purpose for the health of the lake

As I finished examining the drain, I wandered to the place where I ended my journey for today: the mark where the gravel path ended and the forest began. Although I had planned to go further into the woods today, the murkiness and mystery of the waters of the lake had drawn me in, and I was short on time. The entrance to the woods provides a place of remarkable contrast for me to write about; the scenery changes from that of man-made beauty to that of nature, with man’s creations filling in the gaps. With leaves crunching on the otherwise-quiet morning ground around me, I was able to stand at the border and take in the contrast, and it’s something that I look forward to exploring from the other side in my next blog post. However, I had to head home, and with one last look I jogged back to my car, bringing a conclusion to my most recent venture to the lake.