It is a pleasure to appreciate a beautiful essay, especially an essay like Once More to the Lake. Generally speaking, it is an essay telling a story about the author and his son spending the summertime by the lake where the author had wonderful time with his parents when he was little. The story began with the author’s childhood memory, a sweet memory but not a perfect one, which brought them back to the lake, the father and son. Through the whole trip, the author kept thinking about the past and looking at the present and finally got lost in the beautiful scenes.

The author was excellent at drawing beautiful pictures with his pen, pictures with attractive scenery and people who are having fun. You will definitely feel that you are looking at, even wanting to go into the lovely scene and join the people in it when reading the paragraphs. Sometimes you have no choice but following the author direction, following his steps to see the things that he wanted you to see. This journey begins when the author drove his car along with his son, back to the lake.

On the way to the lake, the memories kept coming back to the author one after another. He could remember all the mornings exactly, the partitions, the pines and the stillness of the cathedral. Then very slowly, he picked up his pen and stared to draw the picture little by little. The “cottages sprinkled around”, like the stars in the space; the lake was not a wild one, but to a child, “infinitely remote and primeval”; the tarred road, just as the one in memory, guided people to that “holy spot”. The author stopped for a while, he went closer to watch carefully, but suddenly he felt that time had gone back, he became his father. It is his father but not the author “saying the words or making the gesture”. For the first time, the author felt “creepy”.

The activity for the first morning was fishing. Everything was the same. Six “the same” and two “no years” were used in that paragraph to emphasize the consistency. It is the same boat, the same dragonfly with its changeless behavior, even the people in the scene were the same, still the father and the son. To the author, the lake was a “trustworthy” old friend, just as charming as it used to be, the “sticks and twigs”, the “track of the mussel”, the minnows with their shadows and the water still “felt thin and clear and unsubstantial”.

However the shifts would not hide before the author. He noticed them. The two-track road with the middle track missing, the tape loosened in the tennis court, the country girls with washed hair…. But the author was not influenced by the shifts. He continued drawing his printing with delightful details, the unique “design” within the unchanged background. To the readers, it seemed that the memory and the reality had been mixed up again. What a pity the changes destroyed the illusion one more time. The people’s arriving to the lake was quiet different from that of before, much simpler, much quieter and more uncrowded. To the opposite, the motor boat turned to be less likable, which attracted the son very much.

The whole journey was joyful, as well as the one to readers. The good week ended with a sudden thunderstorm, which was so real that you could hear the thunder. All campers were excited about it, but the author “felt the chill of death” at the end of his essay, which echoed with the “creepy sensation”. I believe these words revealed the under lying meaning that the author did not want to tell directly through his pen.

After reading this essay again and again, I am pretty sure that it was about life and time. The whole article emphasized the sameness between the past and the present, which the author deeply believed. He tried to convince the readers and also himself, but he was clearly aware of the reality: they were not the same. Some people think it is the differences that showed that the time had passed by and things had changed. However, in my opinion, it is the sameness that discloses the changes. Because the author knew when he mentioned “the same” again and again that things were different, just like someone keeps telling others that he is not ill, it is too obvious and strange. Everybody knows nothing will stay exactly the same after dozens of years. The author was surprise to find that time flied so fast that he became the father, his son had already as young as he was when the last time at the lake, and that is why he was creepy and felt the chill of death. But life is so beautiful, you should sit down and learn to appreciate the beauty in it, which was what the author loved and was doing.

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