With each quiet splash the drops would drip down my cheeks. The steady rhythm of my arms and legs finding liquid grip a distant memory, the clear blue green water miles from its glacial home had somehow warmed and found a resting spot among the evergreen shores of Lake Cushman. After so many plunges into that cool water, so many trips to the deep and back, here I was, the quiet rest, the waiting, the knowing one waits for Heaven, on its doorstep, unable to enter, unable to look away, riding crests of silver and blue among the towers of nature, pointed and jagged within their green shrouds standing priestly sentry, saying now….and not yet. -JS