july reflection — Susan Raffo

Something shifted while camping at Lake Erie State Park. Sunsets on the Ohio side of Lake Erie are amazing. So many colors, so many textures. I was sitting on the beach, tucked behind a bluff. There weren’t a lot of people there yet, still a good hour from when the sunset got spectacular. I was sitting with the waves, thinking about how the really big lakes have small tides, spring tides, twice a day. These are the same tides as the ocean’s but they happen less frequently and are less notice-able. I sat there listening to the lake, comparing it with Lake Superior, thinking about freshwater and about what these lakes will mean in the coming generations. All of us who live along the shores of these fresh water glories are living with a resource that others will covet when water gets harder to find.

Breathing in the incomprehensible truth of acres of fresh water, asking the lake to show me its older memories, its dreams of glaciers and melt, something started to well up inside. You know those moments when your entire body begins to organize around something… something big that wants to pass, but there aren’t feelings-feelings or stories or images, just this physical bigness being exhaled from your cells? Well, that’s what happened — my whole body arc-ing and crumbling, sensations like ghosts and winds winding through the present moment heavy-gravity of being in a body. Old stale winds that have…