A Dock Alone in October

The season ended, the lifeguards went back to whatever they do the other nine months, the chairs got folded and stacked on the decking, and the rafts stayed out on the water because there was no particular hurry.

Fog does something to Lake Washington that no other weather manages. The far shore stops existing. The water goes so flat that the floats and their reflections make one shape, and the only way to find the waterline is the rust stripe along the pontoons. This is a big lake with a city on both sides of it, and in this frame it could be anywhere with a hundred yards of visibility.

Seward Park sits on a peninsula that pushes out into the middle of the lake, which is why it fogs like this. Cold water, warmer air, no wind to clear it, and a shoreline path that goes quiet in a way it never does in July.

The leaves in the foreground are doing the dating. Everything else here could be any month with weather in it.