On Water
And why I am always walking to the lake.
Welcome to the Tuesday post for all subscribers! Today, I’m talking about my obsession with living somewhere close to water. On Friday, paid subscribers will receive a recipe for chocolate chai donuts that can be made vegan or with eggs and butter. Choose your own donut-venture!
I try, as often as I can, to walk to the lake. From my house, it’s just over a mile to the sandy dunes of the Evanston beach. Unless the weather is unbearable or I’m working outside the house that day, I walk to the water and stand on the dunes. I know in my head that the body of water I’m seeing is just a lake, but most days, it feels like an ocean, stretching as far as the eye can see, turning colors with the weather and washing up on shore with the same relentless crash. (My guess is that those who live by the ocean will feel differently about how similar these shores *actually* look. Just let me live my fantasy!)
I grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, a city that is known for being the point at which the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers combine to form the Ohio River. I rarely interacted with those bodies of water aside from brief glimpses of the gray-brown gulfs on our way to my grandmother’s for dinner. The water in the rivers of Pittsburgh was (and remains) infamously dirty. Rather than jealousy, I was always struck with a mild disgust when I saw boats chopping through, even on bright sunny days when the water shone with the blue of the sky. These were not waters in which I wanted to swim.
Even so, I always felt comforted by the rivers and the anchors they planted in the geography of the city. Field trips, classes on local history, and walks around Point State Park (the, uh, point at which the rivers combine into one) made me feel, deep in my bones, that there was a purpose to Pittsburgh and a significance to this land. It is an area that has been home to indigenous settlements and trading posts of colonizers alike because it sits at such an important strategic place. Maybe it is learning about this history that has made me feel, deep down, since I was very young, that life is meant to be lived close to water.
I spent summers at a cottage where, some 200 steps from the house, there was a body of water into which I could plunge on hot days. It made me feel grounded, much more grounded than I felt on a street full of yards where the closest body of water to which I could walk was our neighbor’s pool. When we were home, I craved being at the lake, to be able to see the wind on the water, hear the splash of the waves, and wonder at the life that teems beneath the surface. It was unavoidable, in that place, to go for a walk and not see the water. It was omnipresent, becoming a part of me when I spent time there. I could still tell you exactly how it smells and sounds on that particular lake.
I think this was where I started to realize that I needed to see water as often as I could. It became a pull, one that I couldn’t resist. Go to the shore. Stand where the water meets the land. Watch the waves and breathe with them. Feel yourself come back to earth.
When I think of the places I’ve felt the most at peace, they’re all anchored by water and waves: the house outside of Asheville where we spent a month, which had a wall of windows that looked out on a river. The apartment in Firenze, a short walk from the Arno and its storied banks. The forest outside of Big Sur, where the crash of the waves of the Pacific hits into the mountains.
When I moved to Chicago, being able to spend days on a beach in the summer and walk a frozen lakeside in the winter became one of my favorite things in life. Though as we bounced from apartment to apartment, we sometimes lived a few miles from the shore, we made time and space for walks to the lake, as if drawn by some magnetic force.
I still feel that pull. When I start to feel as if I’m drifting or distracted or detached, all I have to do is walk to the shore and watch the waves again to bring myself back down to earth. In the moments that we daydream of finding another home, I know deep down that I will not feel settled there unless we are near the water.
As always, thanks for reading! It’s such a privilege to write for you, but I especially appreciate you reading a post that is not food-related. I have a big audacious goal to grow this newsletter in 2024. Can you help me out with that and forward to a friend so they can subscribe, too? See you back here on Friday for donuts, and in the meantime, read more about what I do at www.pageandplate.com.