Walking through water with my cold feet cringing, sloshing sounds reach ahead and behind. People's possessions rest in crooked, uncomfortable places either a few feet or miles from where they sat before water lifted them, carried them, then dumped them elsewhere.

Living in a lake town is beautiful, serene, soothing in the summer, but dangerous when it rains on frozen ground.

Teaspoons at a time and pooling on the floor, water still trickles in through the basement stone. As rain still fell and filled the world's dips and crags with water's perfect smoothness Sunday, I listened to the trickling, dripping trip it made through my house's invisible cracks.

Mother Nature doesn't mind her outbursts. The trouble is us little people with our staffs jammed in the mud yelling at the night sky and insisting on impossible, fleeting things. Dogs know better. Like the red-tailed hawk dragging its shadow across reemerging stones and trampled leaves today, the dogs meet complications and circle until prospects are better. Maybe the hurdles diminish with distance, and they play forgetfully in the breeze.