I walk across the first half of the wooden bridge, pass the gazebo, cross the second half and come to my reflection spot; a dirt path to the right at the end of the bridge. I realized that I have never set foot on this path even once since going to school here. Now that I think of it, it is one of a few places that I have never fully explored on campus. I decide to take a few steps up the path, until I get a good view of the portion of the lake cut off from rest by the bridge and gazebo.
There is a thin layer of ice that stretches across this part of the lake. From what I can see, it is currently the only part of the lake that seems to be icy. The ice is pockmarked with cracks and holes. Each of them individually seem to originate at a point, a single hole in the ice, and then branch out cracking in all directions. They remind me of something, but I can’t place it at first. Then it comes to me, an image washed in pink on an overhead projector in biology class. They look like neurons.
I look across the lake at the remnants of the snowfall on its banks. Behind me into the forest I see trees with bare branches that seem to scrape the reddening sky. They remind me again of those pink neurons, jutting out from the rigid trunks. To the left of me across to the opposite bank are two willow trees; their drooping branches look stringy and dry. Eventually my gaze falls inevitably upon the squarish object floating in the lake, trapped by the ice. It is a familiar gray trash can that can be seen in almost every building on campus, and… it’s in the lake. I can’t help but wonder how strange this is. Seeing trash in the lake is bad enough, but seeing the thing that you put trash into in the lake? That’s like littering to the second power.
Something pops into my head, a bitter, sarcastic advertisement, a slogan, as well as the person who stupidly followed its direction:
Westhampton Lake, not only a good place to dump your trash, but also a great place to dump the trash!