Flooded Forest

Some springs forget how to stop raining. That May in 2019 was one of them, and by the time a friend came calling carrying more than his luggage, the water had already begun rewriting the map.

He wanted only a lake, and quiet enough to set his mind down beside it. We have several tucked near here, places most people pass without knowing.

We chose George Payne Cossar, an old favorite of mine, one that rarely draws a crowd. The few who find it come for the fish, not the hush beneath the trees.

We arrived to a campground gone under, water standing where the campsites should have been, the whole place quietly reclaimed. Still, we found one picnic table close enough to reach, and we sat.

Birds moved through branches that now stood like pillars in a mirror. The sun scattered itself slow across the water, patient, the way light is when it has nowhere else to be.

It was the kind of peace we'd come looking for, quiet enough to clear a mind, and a soul, before the long drive home.

But what stayed with me longest wasn't the water itself. It was how little it seemed to matter to the people who live here, as though a flooded campground were simply Tuesday, nothing worth remarking on. As though the land had always known what to do with too much, long before I ever did.