Racing the Sunset to the Lake

We live less than 10 miles from one of the largest lakes in Georgia and a little over 50 miles from the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. It's beautiful country and I don't spend time in it enough. My drive to and from work takes me very near the lake, yet I seldom slide over there to visit. Even tonight, to capture this, I had to park on the far side of the road and scoot across. There wasn't much traffic but I felt... Exposed. Awkward. Almost as if I was trespassing (I wasn't). I wanted to enjoy the sound of the waves. I even tried to make an Instagram Stories video (failed). I did get this photo but cars kept going by behind me and I couldn't get any closer to the water's edge due to low visibility and the breakwater and... Something of the experience was lost as I watched the light fade and I started to get cold.

I've been trying to write this post for about an hour. Of course, I picked the hour that included bedtime for my boys. While they don't need the kind of total supervision that they once did, they still require a lot of prompting, reminding and general antagonizing until they comply. So my original ambitions for it, where I considered recapping a lovely workshop I attended over the weekend, thought about describing the day full of ups and downs that I had today, toyed with sharing an apology I had all worked up to offer to a friend who showed me in the form of a huge hug that she wasn't expecting any such thing from me...

Turns out that all you're really going to get tonight is this silhouetted shot of one of a thousand bits of shoreline along this meandering lake's borders. Now I'm thinking of borders and walls and bubbles and privilege and castle battlements and combat.

I hope I can get back to the lakeside soon. Maybe tomorrow afternoon between work and an appointment? Maybe this weekend? There's more medicine there for me - I know that's what it was trying to tell me this evening when it drew me there in an almost frantic rush as the light faded and the dark rushed in on the lapping waves.