For Love of Lakes

Deep Heart’s Core

· · 20 · · Deep Heart’s Core Ihearlakewaterwithlowsoundsbytheshore... Ihearitinthedeepheart’score. W. B. YEATS A few years ago in early April four immense earthmovers arrived at the edge of a farm field two blocks from my house in a Minneapolis suburb. The yellow behemoths arranged themselves in an intimidating line, then fell silent awaiting orders. The next week the machines growled into action and fell to rearranging dirt, soil that had nurtured corn and soybeans for as long as I can remember. When the machines left three months later, a large irregularly shaped hole remained in the center of the field. It began filling with water. An earth-tone sign sprouted at the corner of the field proclaiming : “Cobblestone Lake Preserve—Executive Lake Community.” Yellow digging machines followed and mounds of earth arose beside holes the size of houses. “For Sale” signs erupted like weeds across the landscape. The lots sold quickly, buyers rushing to pay a premium for lots onthe“lake,”whichintruthislittlemorethanastormwaterretentionpond. More than nine hundred lakes dot the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area. More than 12,000 grace the landscape of Minnesota. Not enough. Our appetite is insatiable. Another housing development, Diamond Lake Woods, has recently · · 21 · · taken root in a farmer’s field off the southwest corner of a lake two miles from my house as the cormorant flies. Though no lakeshore is involved, those lots that merely have a view of the lake cost half again more than other lots not so blessed. My time spent stuck in traffic jams with people heading to lake country from Minnesota to Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, and New England convinces me that we humans have, if not a flat-out love for lakes, a particularly strong attraction to them. That attraction has deep roots. In 1910 the popularity of Lake Winnipeg beaches busied a dozen trains a day moving more than 40,000 people between Winnipeg and the lake on holiday weekends. By the early 1900s, housing developers in places like Lakewood, Ohio, had discovered that lakefront lots appealed to homebuyers more than lots in other locations, and by the 1880s the people of Cleveland had begun building summer homes on the shore of Lake Erie. The hundred rooms of the Mineola Hotel drew vacationers to the shores of Fox Lake in northeastern Illinois in 1884. Sixteen years later a rail line from Chicago opened floodgates, pouring hordes more visitors into the Fox River Basin lakes. Decades earlier, in the 1840s, Henry David Thoreau was sharing with readers his infatuation with Walden Pond. I suspect an emotional pull, not conscious reason, determined Thoreau’s choice of a lake as his central metaphor. By the late 1700s landscape artists and poets had discovered England’s Lake District. William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, smitten by the landscape, went to live among the lakes and gained fame and following as the Lake Poets. Stimulated by the writings and paintings of a coterie of artists and authors, the number of visitors to the lakes became a flood as quickly as road improvements allowed. The power of lake’s pull is evident even in the early seventh century. Celtic Christians believed resurrection occurred at the site of burial and so took pains to place churches and cemeteries in what were judged especially aesthetic settings, often by lakes, to please the soul for eternity. Saint Kevin chose to live in the Glen of Two Lakes, Glendalough, refusing suggestions by an attending angel that the setting be modified. Why are we drawn to still waters? The feeling is so natural the question itself appears silly, like asking why we love babies, mourn our dead, or deep heart’s core landscapes· · 22 · · laugh at one circumstance and cry at another. Attraction to lakes is simply anotherofcountlesshumantendencies.ZoologistGordonOrianssuggests, however, that, “As anthropologists have long known, the values of society that nobody questions reveal most about a culture.” Explaining human behavior has never been easy. Do we go to lakes simply to play? (“Laking” is the dialect word for playing in England’s Lake District.) Increasingly, my observations don’t support that explanation. Geri and I once traveled to a state park with our canoe for a lazy weekend at a lake we had never explored. Pleasantly warm temperature, a bright sunny sky, and calm winds made the lake irresistible. Cabins and homes lined the waterfront. It seemed a wonderful opportunity to poke along the shore by canoe and see what people actually do at the lake. At the first cabin...