The Last Word On Nothing

There is a lake not far from where I live now. I’m not a person who has ever invested deeply in place; I am a child of immigrants and I have always been somewhere temporarily. I don’t know the place where I was born, and as much as I love my hometown, I always knew I would leave it. In college and grad school, I knew I was just passing through. But after almost eight years in Seattle, I’ve finally accepted that I live here. I am here with no plans to leave. While friends have come and gone, breweries opened and closed, politicians elected and disgraced, the lake has been here all along.

Getting to know her has been an honor. Like any other friend, I have become acquainted with her in steps. I met her through friends, and at first, I only spent time with her every once in awhile, and usually briefly, shallowly — just passing through, just saying hello. Now I am there almost every day. Sometimes I am there with others, but most of the time, I’m there just to see her. I have kayaked in her waters, walked and run her perimeter countless times, picnicked on her banks, eaten ice cream on the docks. I’ve seen her many moods: hopeful (daybreak), mysterious (a fog at dusk), moody (grey and misty), furious (driving rain and wind), festive (cross-country skiers gliding new paths into snow), murderous (icy, and bitterly cold), glowing (summer sunsets). Even when she is at her worst, I know it will pass; her emotions are literally the weather. By the same token, she has seen my moods. Some days, I’m euphoric, and the runs feel easy. Other days, I’m pounding the ground, running out my frustration. On the worst ones, I plod along slowly, and the loop I know so well feels impossible, even though I know it hasn’t changed.

She has rewarded my loyalty by introducing me to her friends. There’s the heron that everyone stops to photograph. There are the resident geese and the fearless seagulls, as well as the guy who feeds them baggies of torn-up bread, holding out his arms so they land all over him. There are the cottonwoods, right next to the alcove where hobbyists launch their remote-controlled sailboats. There’s the writer who sets up a table in the summer, asks you for three themes, and handwrites poems while you wait. There’s the round man who always shuffles along at a half-run, half-walk in a dirty white t-shirt and grey shorts. There’s the abandoned payphone by the basketball courts, and the tree that just fell a few weeks ago over by the amphitheater where the Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin once played. There was, until about a year ago, a tree stump halfway between the amphitheater and bathhouse, which I still look for every time I run.

In the local library, I saw a whole book about her and the plants that grow there. This spring, once everything is lush and green again, I’m planning a heart-to-heart with her where I walk the loop with the book in hand, looking even more carefully at each thing I have passed a million times. Time and attention, I’m realizing, is the only way to show care, to build a lasting relationship with place. For the first time in my life, I am finally committed to staying.