Edgewater Park

I don’t know what it is about that park, the long, thin plot of land that hugs the shore of Beaver Dam Lake just north of town. It’s beautiful there, for sure. The sunsets are phenomenal, the views quiet and peaceful most of the year.

But there’s something else, some quality, something that feels like power. I’ve had places like that before. Quiet beautiful spots to sit and think and walk and just be. But there is some magical quality that I find at Edgewater Park that draws me back, like I belong there. Like there is something for me to learn, if I can listen closely enough, if I can be wise enough to hear it.


Beaver Dam Lake is long, shallow, and always windswept. But the section of the lake at Edgewater Park seems to have its own climate. There are days that town, just two miles to the south, is cold, windy and bitter, and the lake at Edgewater is tranquil as a mill pond. There are days that town is perfect, sunny and warm, and this marshy park is icy and raw. As if it didn’t hear the forecast.


My friend Rhino introduced me to the park when I got my dog last December. Sometimes he'd bring his yellow lab, Molly, to play with Somewhere, the yin and yang labs sliding through the snow, darting in and out of brush and prairie grass as we walked. I had forgotten how much I liked walking around outside investigating, even in the winter. I started coming to the park almost everyday, and the whole world would slip away for a little while. I felt warm and safe, despite the cold and snow.

I went to the park the evening of Obama’s inauguration. I was happy, mostly because I was so proud of how far we’ve come as a country, as human beings, to stop looking at skin color and be able to look at the person within. I forgot my camera, so I had to use the one on my phone, which totally didn’t do it justice. The sky looked like it was glowing. The whole sky. I’m sure that I’ve never seen anything like it.

There was an ice storm in March, a rainy black night that froze everything in its path. The morning sun melted most of it, making driving safe again. I didn’t think of what the park would look like, I just took the dog for a walk. The entire park, every weeping willow and cattail, was covered in thick, melting ice. It sounded like a waterfall. Every branch and twig was coated in a layer of ice, and the whole place looked as though it had been set in glass.

There was a storm in April, just as the first twenty yards of ice melted around the shore. It was just a spring thunderstorm, some wind, a little thunder, a lot of rain. The next day I took Somewhere to the park for a run and found mounds of ice stacked along the shoreline. From a distance they looked like large piles of snow left by a plow, but once I got closer I realized they were ice formations, pushed up onto shore from the storm. Gigantic piles of glittering delicate ice that looked and sounded exactly like breaking glass. I couldn’t imagine the violence created by forcing this ice onto shore. I was mesmerized, and took about 300 pictures, in different lights, for two days.

I went to the park to fish with my cousins a few times this summer, but mostly I avoided it. It was full of people grilling, and there was an ebb and flow of motorized watercrafts coming from the boat launch that inevitably made my stomach hurt. Once they invaded, I retreated. I’d sometimes grab a quick look at a sunset, shoot a couple pictures, but the park itself felt distant. And at least for the time being, no longer mine.

When I went there with my cousin Joey just after Labor Day, we sat on the far pier, goofed around talking in funny accents while he fished. I was feeling confused and sad and beat up by life. Joey and I didn’t really talk about the stuff I had going on, mostly he was just there, making me laugh. When he shone his light into the water, we took a double take. The lake itself along the shore was thick and green; Joey’s bobber resisted the heavy liquid. I wasn’t surprised. It made perfect sense to me that the lake would be pea soup at that particular moment. Also not surprising was that it stuck around for weeks.

I went out there last week, on a whim. I had spent the cold, rainy morning watching movies (which I rarely do and should really do more often) and just decided to check out Edgewater Park. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was completely vacant. I drove up by the boat launch and realized that the lake was dead calm, despite the lingering wind and rain in town, across the whole state.

I’ve been going there for nearly a year now. I know it by heart, but it always surprises me. I never tire of its views, its sunsets and storms. And maybe this is what I’m supposed to learn, or be shown. That there can be violent storms, beautiful sunsets and safety all in one place. That this is life, at its best and its worst. That not everything that’s scary or painful has to do with me, it’s just a part of the whole. And if you don’t like it, wait it out a little. There are bound to be more surprises, and you’ll never guess what comes next.