The heavy, steel ferry slaps through sharp waves, driving spray along its full length. Green capped lumps string along the horizon, separated slightly by lake blue, chained toward each other by long, gently sloping litters of brownish-black boulders. The contours connect smoothly. It's easy to see these low islands as hilltops joined in a long peninsula. Later, on the beach, exposed, water-smoothed rocks thrust thirty feet farther out than usual.
Wind driven waves thrash in frustration far away.
A big new treefall blocks the path, its shallow roots tilted skyward like a drunken spider web. If the lake were to drop just another two or three feet, whole bays could turn into mud flats, new islands could pop up, thousands of acres of swampy ground could become prime real estate. It's happened before, lots of times. Folks at the National Weather Service in Burlington flatly deny that the rise and fall of Lake Champlain is changing at all. Their chief climatologist rather defensively denounces certain journalistic speculations that the lake is rising.