AUTUMN is a good time for us beachcombers. All but the bravest swimmers have disappeared, the weather is tolerable and the sands are dotted with treasures: lake glass, those jagged shards tumbled into frosted gems by the rhythm of stone and water.
Clear, brown, green or blue, some are no bigger than a thumbnail, some the size of a half dollar. The best pieces are rounded, pitted and cloudy — well-seasoned — a wordless story read with the palm and fingers, a palpable bit of the lake’s memory.
The story of lake glass is the story of sand. A bottle fragment is worn down by the hour and day and decade — by rock and sun, by the undertow and riptides, the lateral tug and pull of the waves. Garbage carelessly tossed away slowly returns to its origin, to granules of sand. The bottle becomes the beach again.
But here is the miracle of lake glass: The gemmaker, the mindless lake, teaches the junkmaker, the rational human, how to belong to the cycle of nature, how to heal what we have poisoned, how to live in another kind of time — how to see.
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Tom Montgomery-Fate teaches writing at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn and is the author of “Steady and Trembling: Art, Faith and Family in an Uncertain World.”
