Edges are where everything happens

Notes · no. 2

The middle of a lake is mostly a desert with a view. The productive part is the margin — the shallow shelf where light still reaches the bottom, and the reed fringe behind it.

Two edges matter and they are easy to confuse. One is the waterline, which moves. The other is the depth at which light gives out, which moves too, but for different reasons and on a different schedule. A wet spring shifts the first. A clouded-up summer shifts the second. They can move in opposite directions in the same season, which makes a tidy explanation hard to come by.

I suspect most of what I find confusing about a given water body is really just these two edges disagreeing.