Academic

Lake House--Stuntz

By David Skeel and Bill Stuntz

Thanks to the kindness of some local friends, Ruth and I have spent most of this week at a lake house in New Hampshire.  It's a remarkable place.  Staggeringly lovely and (much to my surprise) nearly deserted:  I guess the traffic returns on weekends.  Today was still; the lake looked glassy save for the tiny ripples moving along its surface.  Sitting on an old wooden dock, all I could hear was the low buzz of insects, a few birds, and the sound of barely-moving water lapping at the dock.

To me, such places offer a kind of magic.  Their near-silence sings to my soul:  a soft love song, sweet and sad and achingly beautiful.  The scene seems at once alive and at rest, and I feel as though I belonged to it.  I usually think of myself as having been made to do things:  raise a family, teach, write.  But I wonder sometimes whether, instead, we might be made for places.  If so, I was made for someplace like this.

Though I love that world, going home to the world of cities and cell phones and reliable internet access will be hard.  But then, I'm not sure whether I'm going home or leaving it.  Beauty can confuse, even as it captivates.

Full post as published by Less than the Least on August 28, 2008 (boomark / email).