#border lake

Border Lake

The farther North you travel, the colder it gets. Take that border county of which no one speaks. Look at the straggly length of its capital town: the bleakness after a fair, cattle beaten home. The only beauty nearby is a small glacial lake sheltering between drumlin moons of mountains. In winter it is completely frozen over, reeds bayonet sharp, under a low, comfortless sky. Near the middle there is a sluggish channel where a stray current tugs to free itself. The solitary pair of swans who haunt the lake have found it out, and come zigzagging, holding their breasts aloof from the jagged edges of large pale mirrors of ice.