Loon Lake

Image credit: Eric C Carter @dizzypixel. Photograph + illustration by hand; no filters.

Like his work? Let him know: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Dizzypixel

The safest time was the middle of the night. There was rarely anyone around during those darkest hours, and if, per chance, she were to happen upon someone lurking in the blackness, she could always slink amongst the shadows that played with the moonlight dancing across the lake and disappear before she was noticed. In the winter, when the water of the lake was sluggish like molasses as it lapped on the snow blanket shores, before the cold penetrated deep enough to freeze it solid, she lingered in her whitewashed world. And sometimes, when she was really lucky, on a summer afternoon in the middle of the week she could steal a few hours alone on the sun drenched shores of her lake, just her, and the birds, and the wind whispering in the trees. But to perform her duties, she always waited until night.

It was true, she didn’t have to do what she did. She heard the murmurs, from deep underground, and high in the sky, they whispered to her, telling her how it was elsewhere. Rumors of places that had given up, tales of places where others were overwhelmed, where others just gave up, where the people crowded like a swarm of gnats in the sultry summer breeze, buzzing about the shores and splashing in the water. Where the trash blew across the sand instead of leaves, and gasoline left an unnatural rainbow sheen on the water’s surface. No, she couldn’t let her lake get like that. So every night, when the people had all gone, she skipped along the shore, gathering up what they left behind and erasing their footprints in her sand, until once again her lake shone brightly, hanging like a jewel sparkling in it’s cradle of pines while the circle of mountains nodded their approval.

She didn’t blame the people, though, they loved her lake just as much as she did. That’s why they flocked to it, splashing in the cool blue waters to break the heat of summer, and walking along the snow white shores in winter, pausing to breath frosty clouds into the air while admiring the ring of white peaks that surrounded it. How short their lives were compared to hers, how fleeting each of their moments were, how much they must cherish them. Even a second wasted in the pursuit of anything other than enjoyment, well, she could almost understand why they wouldn’t want to spend any of those precious few moments cleaning up after themselves. They couldn’t see the long-term damage they were doing; they couldn’t see how they were shortening the time for enjoyment for those that were destined to follow them. So in the middle of the night, every night, she emerged from the depths of her lake, and she did what she could to erase the scars that were left on the land, even as the water deep in the ground, and the rain that fell from the sky, laughed at the inevitable pointlessness of her endeavors.