Green Reservoir

The color of the lake struck me. Not the color of moss or algae, but the green of Jell-o, of olive hair detergent and food coloring.

 

The islands were unchanged. I could see the same trees rooted in their jagged rocks. Dirt paths winding up the island hills, ferns reaching out from their sides. At a rasher age I would scale the islands with shorts on, and the ferns would leave my legs itching for hours. Sparrow eggs, fallen from their nests, would lay scattered around the bushes, some with yolk pouring out their cracked shells and seeping into the dirt.

 

A wood canoe was secured to the foot of the dam, bobbing to the push of the lake’s waves. It was the same canoe my grandfather and I rowed around the lake every year before, sometimes visiting the islands to collect eggs, sometimes checking the net traps for trout.

 

Yet they no longer contributed to an image of tranquility. It was as if the lake had expelled everything from its embrace, its common aesthetic. Everything seemed foreign to it, like tulips in a plastic jar.

 

A minute ago, while climbing to the top of the dam, I was expecting to see the same transparent lake I had seen every summer. Things always seemed to change very slowly in my father’s hometown. I had forgotten that time passed as quickly anywhere in the world.

 

My grandfather had not given me any word of advance before I went to the dam. As one of the dam monitors working here every day, he would have known about it. Yet he was a man who spoke only when words were needed, even to his children and grandchildren. Hence I knew about the green only when I saw it.

 

I recall feeling immediate anger. Who had ruined this paradise, and for what reason? Was it for profit, or the economy, or out of pure carelessness? Knowing nothing of economics and environmental science, I could barely form a hypothesis.

 

At that moment I had wanted to find my grandfather and ask what had caused this contamination. But at the same time, a mechanism in my mind began taking its course.

 

It guarded the comfort of my mind like a cobra guarding its nest. It allowed me to avoid anything unpleasant, anything that would gnaw at me from the inside. Instead of admitting that something cruel had taken place, something I had no power to change, it seemed easier to turn away from the issue and spin stories into the truth.

 

I employed the same tactic I used on politics, on social issues, and on family relationships. I shrunk away from the whole matter, retreating into a world separate to reality where all problems become either irrelevant or nonexistent.

 

Perhaps this was normal. Perhaps the pollution was worth it, and some economic value was gained. It was probably no different than the two looming factory chimneys across my apartment window in Shanghai, another sign of “economic progress”. In that occasion, all I needed to do was swap rooms with my brother whose room faced another direction, and the chimneys bothered me no more.

 

And thus I severed the lake from my childhood. It became a plain green reservoir I would never visit again, either in person or in memory.