Pink Lake in Autumn

2026-10-15

On Thanksgiving afternoon, I went to Pink Lake in the Gatineau Hills. At this hour on an ordinary day, I would still be on the road, hands on the wheel from morning to night, delivering parcel after parcel — my time belonging to other people, my pace set by other people's doors. It is rare to have an afternoon with empty hands and unhurried feet, so I went to walk by the lake.

The lake is called Pink Lake, though there is nothing pink about it. The name comes from a family who cleared and farmed this land long ago; it has nothing to do with colour. In autumn the whole hillside gathers around it: maples gone red, birches yellow, the pines still deep green, layer upon layer enclosing the water. The lake seems to gather all those colours into itself and lay them down quietly at the bottom.

There was mist that day. From the lookout on the boardwalk, the lake lay flat as a freshly polished mirror; the light was a pale grey, the shadows of clouds sank into the water, and you could not tell where the sky ended and the lake began. On the near shore stood a tree that had lost most of its leaves, its branches reaching toward the water, like someone who starts to speak and then stops. Far along the boardwalk, two or three visitors appeared small; their voices floated briefly over the surface before the mist gathered them away.

I walked slowly along the shore path. When the wind rose, the lake wrinkled, and all that reflected colour broke into fine, glittering scales; when the wind died, the ripples closed again inch by inch, putting the hills back in order, as if nothing had happened. Pine branches hung beside the path, their needles beaded with moisture. A nameless shrub had leaves half red, half green — like a person at middle age: half of life already burned bright, half still green, each with its own reason.

Standing there, looking at a whole lake of quiet, it came to me that another year is nearly gone. On my delivery rounds I have seen this city at every kind of dawn — in snow, in rain, before the light. Life pushes a person along; there are few chances to stop. But today I had to hurry nowhere and deliver nothing; I could simply watch the mist drift slowly over the water and the leaves fall slowly to the ground. An afternoon like this, it turns out, is a luxury. Thanksgiving — perhaps this is what the thanks is for: after travelling so far, a person can still stop beside a lake, and the heart can still hold a little quiet.

On the way back, the mist had thinned a little, and the hills across the lake showed themselves layer by layer, clearer than when I came. The sky was still grey, but the mist inside me seemed to have lifted a little, too.