Lakeness

Children who have seen a small lake surrounded by a white sand beach have beginning ideas of what lakeness is.

Sam was painting big abstract landscapes in those days — masses of green and brown and blue plucked from the world around here — and he would tell me the right way to look at the lake, how to empty myself of all thoughts of lakeness, and just see the thing.

Ahead stretched miles of the unknown, lands and waters resembling my home waters, yet not quite it. There was a disturbing feeling of lakeness: unlike four-doored Possession Sound and multi-doored Puget, Port Susan had but a single door.