Reputations

My first visit to Lake Lowell wasn’t until 2019, with Scott, my brother-in-law. We had resisted going — its reputation as an undesirable lake had kept it off our list — but we launched his aluminum fishing boat in search of Largemouth Bass and headed for the south shore.

We found cottonwood trees and flooded bushes, a tangle of branches at the water’s edge. Green water. Warblers, orioles, meadowlarks echoing through the canopy. Little coins of light dancing on the surface.

I looked the lake up when I got home. Established in 1909. Before my grandparents were born. Before the First World War. Nothing but farms out here then, and someone decided to flood it. A century of water had exposed the root balls along the shore, worn the banks into gentle lines, turned the whole south edge into something that felt ancient and hidden and ours.

Reputations can be wrong.