Closing Lakes

A lot of what Colorado calls lakes are really reservoirs – storing water for when it is needed.

What Loveland, Colorado calls Lake Loveland is really just a lovely, wet holding pond for the water that Greeley farmers can use when it’s urgently needed.

 It’s urgently needed now. It has been hot and dry for two long months. The whole world seems dehydrated. Each day the shore gets bigger and the lake gets smaller. Monday may have been the last day local kids and grownups could splash in the coolness and play in the sand.

The lake will close.

 That’s sad but we need the things that Greeley farmers grow and they won’t grow without our water.

 I used to live in Chicago, on the shores of Lake Michigan. It never closed (although sometimes it washed up things like dead fish that made it less appealing).

 Water dictates our lives. Not just for splashing. For growing and fishing and drinking.

 Sometimes, in Chicago’s summer sauna, I used to wish for dry. Now I have dry. And I also have a deeper appreciation of water magic.

 Eating dinner outside tonight, my friends and I reveled in the lovely cool drops that fell from the reluctant sky. We celebrated the brief rain, the brief respite from the heat, and the refreshing swoosh of wind.

 The lake will close but we will carry on.