Times like these I think finding strength in peaceful moments can be such a powerful escape from everything. So let’s talk about haunted lakes.

In October, my friends and I took an improbable road trip to converge upon Lake Eyrie in Ohio. As someone who grew up close to the Pacific Ocean, there’s something about the stillness of a Great Lake that’s unsettling to the extreme. It can be so quiet for such an enormous body of water. An ocean is terrifying and always moving and you always know that it’s so preoccupied with its mysterious unknowns and its own vast ecosystems of life that it’s not going to give a fuck about a puny mortal like yourself.

The lake, on the other hand, is watching.

Maybe it’s because I lived in a desert where it would rain maybe three days a year, but that much freshwater still boggles my mind. The lake’s moods are ever-changing. From our little haunted house (that’s a different story) we watched it go from still and quiet, to churning with restless anger. My friends and I sat on the deck and watched it rear up like some enraged eldritch creature and smash itself against the rocks like it was trying to grab us. No thanks!

As far as I’m concerned, all the Great Lakes are haunted. They feel like they know too much and they’re going to use it against you. You can at least trust an ocean to be impersonal about your drowning death. You can trust its depths to be dark. Mostly.

Each day we were there, it felt like the lake was a different entity entirely, tempestuous and lovely and unpredictable. 

When we first arrived, the midges were out and about in such multitudes that they curtained the windows of our rented house. We couldn’t go outside without insects flying into our faces. We found out later from local Cleveland friend Dylan that these midges only come for a week or two in the year. They rise in a horrifying hell swarm from the lake, fuck nonstop, and then die immediately. A reminder about life’s ephemeral beauty, I guess. Or its majestic horniness.

But that’s not all they do! It turns out midges are a sign of a healthy lake. They feed the fish. They clear out debris. Their larvae worm bodies burrow deep into the soft muddy sediment of the lake, irrigating it with water and increasing microbial respiration. They help the lake breathe.

All this to say, I absolutely loved it there, at that breathing, haunted, midge-laden lake. A thunderstorm rolled in over the horizon, the sky darkening so quickly it felt like someone had turned the lights out, and we all sat on the deck with our drinks and watched the light show. You feel uniquely small, seeing a thunderstorm manifest. I took that feeling back with me when it was time to leave my friends and go home. That week was a bulwark of peace to stand against all the chaos of the coming weeks.