Twilight Time

Lucy on the Lake - With Diamonds

When I was a kid I used to wait on our dock at Lake Fairlee for the sun to drop and shimmer a long line of light from shore to shore. If I dropped my eyelids halfway and looked through my eyelashes the light would break into sparkles, like diamonds, and the lazier my eyelids and perception became, the more distinct and starry the diamonds would become.

My footsteps around my Colorado lake make a deep frozen crunch again tonight. The downtown bank sign glares 3 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m glad to escape that urban measure into my own zone. I think I’ve dressed warmly enough – start cold and you’ll warm up – but I have to cover my cheeks with my gloves. My hair has enough moisture to freeze into crackly wisps and I think Jack Frost has landed.

The same frozen, wispy pallor hangs over the lake and trees. The skyline is every color and no color, layering from a wan blue to pale pink and back. I’m out a little earlier tonight and it’s a different world.

And if I take off my glasses and drop my eyelids the scene becomes a water color, without any edges, just shapes of color and snowy diamonds on the lake. The ice at the far end is steaming in the extreme cold and it whomps and bumps as I walk by, cracking under its own expanding pressure. Twilight dims quicker now and the sky holds on to its final muted colors.

Fox tracks along the shore wander out into the middle of the lake and disappear in the whiteness. More tracks meander along the shoreline and I ask ‘where’s your den?’ as if, could they hear me, they’d reply. Past the dam where the stream still flows, a chattering of mallards stops me to watch, their tails quivering and quacks piercing the cold. I wonder what they eat? I’ll find out and bring them something tomorrow.