The Lake of Eight Echoes

A man recalls what the lake he grew up with has given him - and taken away.

Lake Oscawana is located in upstate New York and was named by the American Indians who once settled the area. Translated, the name is said to mean the Lake of Eight Echoes. I never could count exactly eight of them, but a shout from its shore would bounce between the hills the lake is nestled in and return sounding almost louder than when it was first shouted.  The lake is about three miles long and over a mile wide at its belly.  Small tributaries bring water down from the natural springs in the surrounding hills, and a large swampy outlet eventually leads to the great Hudson river.  In spring the lake would swell, sometimes even overflowing into the backyards of the houses that lined its shores.   My family bought one of these homes when I was seven years old and soon after I wanted to become a naturalist.  

The lake was filled with and surrounded by wildlife.  A white crane stepped daintily through the shiny green lily pads.  Dragonflies chased each other around the hanging boughs of the willow tree.  Frogs chirped and bellowed in the shallow shadowed inlets.  Turtles abounded, snappers and painted, and if you were lucky, you might find a baby the size of a quarter in the spring.  Of course, there was the story of the giant snapper the size of a small automobile that could overturn a rowboat and bite a person clean in half.   Can't say I ever saw one that monstrous, but if you watched the lake on a calm day, you could see the turtles coming up for air and I remember one head sticking up out of the water as big as a spade.  And the fish.  Plenty of striped bass and pike for the fishermen, and for the kids the common sunny, a small round fish caught with a piece of mouth-moistened bread on a hook, and who would nip at your heels if you stepped in their pebbled nests.  

But as much as the lake was abundant with life, life was also lost to it.  There were drownings and boating accidents.  Many of the homes were summer getaways for the wealthy and retired who went south in the winter.  They came back when the lake was warm to swim,  but since it was the first time that some of them had exercised that year there might be a heart attack.  The lake changed as the years went by, as more houses were built, and the phosphates built up, causing the lake to explode with plant life that made it soupy with algae.  In the early years it was safe enough to drive a truck across the ice in a cold winter, and they did.  But it became dangerous, as an increase in rotting vegetation heated the lake and kept the ice thin in spots.  A few family dogs and one girl was lost that way.  A girl I knew.

She was a neighbor that had a summer home on our street and one year she attended our annual 4th of July party.  We eyed each other most of the day until I tried, nervously, to talk to her and we did talk and she said she was going to be moving up here permanently soon.  I remember being secretly overjoyed at this news, as I was shy and needed more time than a summer party to get to know this pretty blonde girl in the light blue summer dress and white sandals.  But I never saw her again, because she fell through the ice and drowned that winter.  

Today as an older man I sometimes sit on the shore of this lake, a lake that has given me so much but also taken away, and finally understand why it is called lake of the eight echoes, even if you couldn't count them all.  

Author's Note

If you read this far thank you and please leave a comment!

Reviews

[Alexandria Reece]

I love the way you cycle life through this to death, the nature in it is brilliant and the style suits it. I feel sorrow at the end, which I am sure is what you were going for, so excellent job there. My favourite bit was:
'The lake was filled with and surrounded by wildlife. A white crane stepped daintily through the shiny green lily pads.'
Reminds me of something Henry David Thoreau might write!

[DCT ponderings]

Sam- I definitely need to learn more about flash fiction. This is incredible. Thank you fr being my introduction.

How something so teeming with life can change into something so haunting. It brought me to a summer spent on the crystal waters of Lake George, a memory I don't ever want to see changed by time or revisiting. And summer camp on Lake Champlain spent searching the methos for Champ.

Thank you for your review, and I'm glad my piece made you more curious about flash fiction. It's nice to hear when a piece of writing has an effect that brings back memories and/or brings up emotion for someone.

[Marie]

Very good. Excellent description of a lake, its beauty and gradual decrease.

[patricia]

You told this well. I find myself where ever i go in the countryside here, longing to know its historical events, the one's which wouldn't normaly get recorded. thanks.

[Archia]

I loved how this was simple, almost like a comment in passing, but it had so much more to it. It had a whole life, a whole story. That part about the girl at the end I thought was really good. It was just this tragic thing that was made to seem simple, which made it tragic. So really, I quite enjoyed this.