Novelist Jess Walter’s most recent novel is Beautiful Ruins.
At dawn, the sun curls across the lake’s placid surface like a twist of lemon on a gin martini. Easing into my kayak on this glacier-cut, 12,000-year-old lake, I feel as I always do on its water: alone in the world.
Well, not totally alone. There is the crew team carving the water beside me, the coxswain’s baritone, “Blades in!” booming across the lake, and the mainsails of 100 sloops like rows of butterflies, the rust-bucket fishing boats and bulldog tugs and barges, the endless parade of businessmen arriving by buzzing sea plane. The shores are lined with houses and condos, streets and freeways choked with the grinding, honking, noisome traffic of, oh I don’t know, 5 million other people!
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