In Need of a Lake.

After a life spent intermittently gadding about all over the place, it seems odd that I rarely stray more than a few miles from The Shire these days. Mel suggested the other day that I should drive somewhere and seek a different walk with different views. I wouldn’t see the point. I saw lots of different views when I worked as a landscape photographer, and eventually the desire to see more waned. It isn’t views I seek now, but natural energies, and the energies here are good. Apart, that is, from one thing: there’s no lake.

I like lakes; I’ve always liked lakes. There’s something about large bodies of still water that arouses a sense of life in me. But it has to be the right sort of lake – a natural lake, an old lake, a lake surrounded by trees with edges softened by a wealth of aquatic plants like bulrushes and water lilies. It needs to be the sort of lake that opens up the mind to the possibility of seeing the faun flit, or the ghost of some long-dead maiden float, among the encroaching trees; the sort of lake that has a calm, inscrutable surface from which might rise at any moment an arm draped in white samite, clutching the magical sword that will bring peace to the land and the soul alike. Even a few darting dragonflies and the ripple of a rising fish would do to start off with.

There’s a river about a mile away, but that isn’t enough. Water isn’t just water; water has radically different qualities depending on where it is and what it’s doing. The aggressive energy of a river is laudable in its own right, but it needs balancing with the reflective quality of stillness. Isn’t it a shame that life is never perfect?