Water’s Whim

The Weight of Water

A meditation on the temporary privilege of buoyancy

Ordinary water, altered vision. Google Photos’ oil-painting effect on author’s photo.

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What floats? My boat? The ocean. The Pacific, to be precise.

Though if you ask Dennett — Daniel, the late philosopher of consciousness — he’d probably tell you that nothing “actually” floats anyway — that buoyancy is just a user-illusion constructed by physics and evolutionary algorithms. But honestly, nobody on the Pacific or the Milwaukee River has time for that guy’s heavy conceptual baggage today.

But that’s not what our Dennett wants to know.

Dennett — the sharp-eyed editor and curation queen around these shores — is asking about the things that manage to stay suspended on the surface of our messy, everyday worlds. And alas, my everyday world has no ocean.

We are keeping it local. We are keeping it literal. Because in my world, “what floats” depends entirely on which specific body of water is currently staring back at me. Or, occasionally, which piece of land decides it wants to stop being land.

The fields float. Photo by Author

You might think you’re looking at a pristine, postcard-perfect Wisconsin lake reflecting a quiet sunset. It isn’t. That is an agricultural field after a torrential downpour. When the sky truly opens up around here, the earth forgets its job description, and suddenly the entire landscape shifts.

The fields float.

Past the flooded fields, we have the ponds. Or teeny-tiny lakes. By the way, why is neighboring Minnesota called the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes? We have waaay more.

Autumn rides the surface. Photo by Author

And on these lakes, something else floats: the reflections. The sky, the low-hanging clouds, and the brilliant fall color of the tree line are riding the water like an oil slick of autumn light.

A green-rimmed saucer of light. Photo by Author

A green-rimmed saucer, holding on to the last rays of the day.

Walk past the freshly mowed backyard lawn, and the permanent runoff pond does its own version of this theater. In July, it becomes a stage for highly questionable physics. Mallards sit high and dry like corks, looking entirely self-satisfied.

A duck shatters the house. Photo by Author

But look closer through the reeds. Another mallard cuts across the water, swimming right through the upside-down peak of a neighbor’s roof. A house floats whole in the pond’s glass, shattered only by the wake of a single bird.

Then there are the turtles. They do not float; they hover. Nonchalantly.

Meanwhile, the northern watersnakes definitely float — mostly because nobody has the courage to go out there and tell them they can’t.

Move a few miles east, and the rules change entirely.

The city floats after dark. Photo by Author

Where the Milwaukee River cuts through the city, the water stops being a quiet ecosystem and becomes a working highway. At night, the historic brick warehouses glow with warm window light and neon signs, throwing long, liquid bands of red, white, and gold onto the black harbor current.

Here, the things that float are made of rusted iron, heavy rivets, and industrial grit. Huge barges, low-slung and blunt-nosed, scrape against the wood pilings, carrying tons of gravel and scrap metal. They defy the imagination. You look at a hundred tons of steel sitting on the river, and your brain insists it should plunge straight to the bottom. Instead, it drifts past empty docks and sleek fiberglass cabin cruisers, all of them miraculously suspended on the same urban current.

But everything feels remarkably small once you stand on the edge of Lake Michigan.

The lake does not care about the delicate mechanics of a duck’s feathers, the precise displacement of a steel barge, or a flooded farm field. The horizon is so wide it looks perfectly flat, a massive blue sheet stretching out until the world runs out of air. On the quiet, glassy days, you can stand on a high, wooded bluff, looking down through thick summer brush at a tiny red-and-white motorboat sitting perfectly still on a vast turquoise floor.

Small boat, enormous lake. Photo by Author

Or you can walk down to where the sandy beach meets the clay bluffs and watch small pieces of driftwood float shoreward on gentle, regular waves, catching against the stone riprap, while your worries float the other way, out into the vast blue. For a moment.

Driftwood comes ashore. Photo by Author

Out past the breakwater, white sailboats bob at anchor, their masts sketching thin lines against the blue.

Masts sketch the blue. Photo by Author

Walk out along the pier, past where the red Pierhead Light stands guard, its reflection floating beneath it, and look back at the Milwaukee skyline. Across the water, the entire city seems to hover.

The red light holds its post. Photo by Author

The U.S. Bank Center — the city’s tallest building — and the gleaming white wings of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Calatrava pavilion remain anchored firmly to shore while a lone sailboat slices through the open chop.

Anchored city, passing sail. Photo by Author

On those days, your mind floats out there, untethered, lost in the sheer scale of the Great Lakes basin. But the lake is moody. Let a sharp north wind kick up, and the water turns violent, tossing driftwood, pleasure boats, and breakwater stones around like gravel in a rock tumbler.

It reminds you that floating is a temporary privilege, granted at the sole discretion of whatever water you happen to be sitting on — whether it’s the endless blue of the Pacific, a glowing downtown river, a backyard pond reflecting a neighbor’s roof, or a cornfield capturing the fleeting color of a season on its borrowed surface.

Thanks to Dennett for the prompt, to Weeds & Wildflowers for giving these pieces a home, and to Dennett and Louise Peacock, the wonderful editors who keep our stories afloat.

[embed]What Floats Weeds & Wildflowers July Promptmedium.com