It was 17 degrees Fahrenheit here in Central Texas this morning with about an inch of snow on the ground. According to the weather app on my phone, the wind chill factor was 3 degrees. Bottom line – it’s cold as hell out. I realize that other parts of the world are consistently colder this time of year, but my blood has thinned out considerably since my childhood years in New Jersey and Connecticut.
For about three summers in a row during that childhood our family belonged to a beach club. The beach was man-made. It bordered a lake in the woods. It had a dock, a low dive, a high dive, and a couple of wooden rafts about 15 yards beyond the dock. The beach’s dirt parking lot doubled as a campground on the weekends. I loved the place. Below is the short story “Morning Solitude” from my collection, 
A String of Beads. It’s fiction except for the setting. I hope I did the lake justice, and I hope you enjoy it and that it provides a bit of warmth.
MORNING SOLITUDE
I turned over and saw a sliver of gray between the canvas tent flaps – morning at last! I wiggled out of my sleeping bag, shivered, scratched at a fresh batch of mosquito bites, and noiselessly slipped on a t-shirt.
I glided barefoot through the tent flaps and into the warm, moist morning. I had the lake to myself. Even the night bugs and frogs were receding before the silver light taking their croaking, whirring, and clicking with them, surrendering the field to one or two early fish splashing the lake’s placid surface here and there in search of a meal.
Curled wisps of fog meandered just above the black lake betraying the water’s ceaseless flow towards the falls. As I approached the water’s edge a spooked frog hopped out of a clump of wet grass and into the dark safety of the lake, a small cloud of stirred bottom just below the surface masking its escape.
I walked along the wet edge of the lake, where its water met the man-made beach’s sand, to the slippery wooden dock whose dew-laden, painted planks felt cool and new underfoot as if they were being touched for the first time. I moved silently on the balls of my feet, stopping when I reached the end of the dock.
I looked at the water three feet below through the thin, translucent layer of mist floating on the lake’s surface. The mist, undisturbed for the moment by the still, morning air, obscured the lake’s imperfections. I strained to peer through the mist, hoping to catch signs of the lake’s life, but all I could see was the flat, wet surface, dark and opaque at this early hour. I looked north to the lake’s source, where the banks of the lake narrowed, where a fast-moving stream fed the lake forever. The mist robbed the distant hardwoods of their summer green color. Another fifty yards upstream and the trees and their soft, morning noises disappeared into the mist.
I turned around to look at the vacant beach, to see its empty peace from out on the water. The morning mist had slipped in behind me obscuring that view. Soon the mist was all around me and above me, reducing to shadow everything just beyond my reach. The length of dock I’d just walked disappeared in the mist. I turned and looked behind me and the whole of the lake was swallowed by the mist. For an instant I stood utterly, joyfully alone, cocooned in a delicate, eternal moment, a weightless moment of fantasy unencumbered by my life. I smiled, closed my eyes, and deeply inhaled the trees, their leaves, the fish, the bugs, the sand, the weeds, the wet wood of the dock. I filled my body with the lake until there was room for nothing else. I stood there satisfied, and when at last I opened my eyes, the mist had cleared, the last small tails of it having disappeared into the morning’s rising heat. A slight breeze rolled a stray paper cup into the lake.
The campground began its ritual as I left the dock to return to the beach. Ten campers, trailers, and tents of various sizes, including ours, lined the parking lot beyond the beach. Muffled, yawning, morning voices greeted each other. Two anxious dogs waited nervously for leashes and escorts. Small, portable stoves supported pans of frying bacon, spattering sausage, quickly congealing scrambled eggs, and more. Cigarette smoke mingled with the smell of instant coffee and fried food. Three crows picked at scraps left at the campground’s far edge. A car made its slow way into the rutted parking lot from the road bordering the lake. An electric razor and an AM radio from the tent next to ours joined the campground’s swelling symphony of sounds and smells.
My father came out of his tent wearing a t-shirt and his swimsuit. He was barefoot. I stopped on the beach when I saw him walking towards me. The expression on his face told me I was in some sort of trouble, that I’d violated a rule. He was silent and stern until he reached me. He towered over me. His eyes narrowed.
“How many times have you been told not to go into the lake alone?”
“I didn’t go in. I swear. I was just on the dock.”
“Well, then, maybe it’s time you went in!”
Before I could respond, he grabbed me under my armpits with one arm and started running for the water. I looked and saw he was smiling. I made a slight effort to free myself, but I started laughing instead. After two steps into the shallow end of the lake, he tossed me into the air, 10 feet ahead of him, and I went hurtling into the cool water, laughing and shouting all at once. I was still spinning when I hit the surface, splashing and thrashing mightily. He followed me with a dive and came up right next to where I was treading water.
I was still laughing when he said, with a grin as big as the morning, “Come on, let’s go get some breakfast. I’ll race you!”
We broke into a sprint, but I’m pretty sure he let me beat him. I stood and started running as soon as the water near the shore was shallow enough. I looked back and he was right behind me all the way up the beach and to our campsite. My mother greeted us with two towels.
“Breakfast is ready. Dry off and grab a plate.”
My brother and sister smiled. Jeannie spoke up.
“Dad told us what he was going to do when he saw you on the dock. He made us promise not to say anything or to warn you.”
I was glad they hadn’t. It was easily the most fun I had the entire weekend with my father.
“Who’s hungry?”
We all scurried to find a plate, grateful that my mother saved her best breakfast efforts for camping at the lake.
