There are 5698 footsteps between my door and the place that I love to sit and stare at the lake. As a child it was a great adventure to run away to the lake and run through the reeds and imagine the great ships made from sellotaped milk cartons that I would cast off the shore. Today in the snow, I walked to the lake again, listening to my soft snow steps through the centre of the car tracks. Once in a while, the wind would blow snow dust off the boughs above and it seemed to me as though the arms of the old trees moved to wave at me, sending their snowy dust out upon the fields. I walked along the lake shore to my favourite vantage point, the waves tremoring along the edge like the meniscus of clear white wine in a nervous grip. The snow had gathered in shallow drifts, like the stuccowork of a great house staircase.
Sitting on the lakeshore today, the undertones of trauma well up, the anxiety heightens and the need to keep moving settles into a heartbeat rhythm. A drip from the blackened overhead branches drops into the almost still water and the tension lifts. For a moment, there is peace. A single drop. A teardrop from the wintery canopy. The lake water looks like it would freeze a soul in perpetuity. Do I want to sit there forever or take the 5698 steps back to the house? And before I’m ready to make a decision, my anxiousness is taking me by the hand back along the snowy shore.
