The Shore That Left

The reservoir had been drawn down for the season and the shore had simply left: hundreds of meters of grey gravel where water stood in spring, the turquoise pushed to a stripe at the far edge like a horizon that owed money. I parked and walked out onto the lakebed because a floor that is usually a lake is not an offer you decline.

It is a strange acoustic space, a drained shore. No surf, no birds, your own steps very loud on the gravel scale. Every stone is rounded and every stone is dry, and the line between those facts is the whole hydrology lesson. I thought, of course, about the Aral, which I walked two years ago; this is the reversible version of that irreversible sentence, and the difference deserves respect rather than comfort.

The self-timer caught me mid-crossing, small, bag on shoulder, going toward water that keeps its distance. A fair portrait of the profession, honestly.