LEMOINE POINT, KINGSTON ONTARIO

This is where you come to not be some place else.

This where you come to not be driving, working, thinking ... doing.

Quiet here: the first impression. Only quiet because you've left other sounds behind. The din of the city, the hum of your life. But not really quiet, not silent: Alive. With Sounds.

The sigh of wind through high grass. The susurrus of water against shore. The breathy laugh of the breeze in the leaves. The splash of the dog's legs as she moves through the water.

The wind really is like breath. You can hear it better here, you can feel it, somehow it's easier to draw that breath into your own lungs and  hold it there, let it mix with your own air and when you exhale, your breath is different. You are different. The wind is part of you. You are part of the wind. You are quieted.

Water has its own language. Ancient, complex, a variety of accents. Oceans have their own dialect; slow and basso profundo and stately yet prone to sudden fits of anger. Rivers understand this dialect as they travel the world and they translate for the lakes that speak a rural patois; lively and quick and continually developing.

We understand these languages. We do. On a deep level an ancient level somewhere deep inside us. Lay down when it is very quiet and become very still and you will hear the echoes of the water language: It is the movement of the blood under your skin.

It is why we are drawn to water.

Water speaks in this place. And the wind in the fur of the dog and the sun on your bare shoulders and the dry whispering of the high grasses.

This is not we normally are. This is away. This is the real quiet.

It's why we come here.

The dog splashes through the water and pauses suddenly, one paw lifted; she raises her muzzle and puts her nose into the wind. Something sweeps through the fur on her face.

She closes her eyes.

And she smiles.