Scattering Coots On Orange Lake

Then there are the times you have to make yourself go. Maybe it was a hangover from the 4-day weekend spent reassuring family and friends that I really was okay, really, and that I foresaw no trouble finding another job, when in truth it really did worry me. Maybe it was hearing all the cars outside my window going to work in the morning. Maybe it was the nightly work dreams where I am clearly trying to make sense of it all. Sometimes it's just a matter of hauling the carcass out to the water to immerse myself in the changing and the changeless.

I've formed an emotional carapace over the years that serves me well in times like these. I can talk to store clerks, strangers, fellow paddlers, damn near anyone, and they have no inkling what is going on inside. This is good, in case you're wondering. I used to be a book far too open and raw for anyone to want to read. Now I can be a person among people on my worst days. So it was that I was able to carry on a 30-minute conversation with a paddling couple just coming out of Orange Lake as I was heading in. They live on the Suwannee and spend their days kayaking and fishing and are both lean, tanned, and wiry. I wanted their life, but spent my time with them sharing a bit of mine.

Orange Lake is now Coot Central and I spent my time out on the water steering between the spatterdock and making them take off and land over and over. I did not realize how loud they are until I closed my eyes to listen. Like midtown Manhattan. Orange Lake is a lake that wants to be a swamp or prairie. It does not seem to be shore-bound and is constantly draining through a hole in the aquifer. The result is a series of islands where you cannot actually trod, but you can't see through them either. Orange Lake is a lake that used to be, but we will continue to call it a lake, because things like that don't change.