musings of the currently-landlocked

[lotesse]

I don't know why, in due South fic, lakewater is always described as bad-tasting and foul-smelling, dark and nasty. I mean, I know that Chicago's watershed is a little different than my more pristine northern Lake Michigan, and I guess dS is set before the invasion of the zebra mussels that contributed to the lake's clarity.

But still: the smell of lakewater is, for me, one of the sweetest scents in all the world, and the taste is sweet and fresh and delicate. Now, the smell of dried-in lakewater can be quite different. But I never feel more happy, more at ease, than when I catch the smell of the Lake they call Michigan on the wind.

Comments

[melannen]

I actually found the smell of the Lake in Chicago to be ... disconcerting; I'm a coastal person so I'm used to any large body of water smelling like the ocean. Lake Michigan smells like the ocean minus the smell of salt, and the smell of the ocean minus the salt is .... wet rotting dead things. It took me a couple of weeks to get used to it!

But only a couple of weeks. (And it was always less strong than the rot-undertone of the seaside smell...)

And that lake is basically the clearest body of water I've ever swum in, including chlorinated swimming pools. Did the zebra mussels really change it *that much*?

[lotesse]

See, being lake-bred, I find the smell of oceans disconcerting! I have the disorienting thought, sometimes, when I'm watching movies with ships and things in them, that the water they're sailing over is salt rather than fresh.

idk exactly about the zebra mussels, the whole thing happened when I was a wee kid - and they seem to be pretty much gone now, now that I come to think about it. But there was a lot of talk at the time about how, even though they were making the lake so pretty, they were an invasive species and thus bad news bears.

[lettered]

I love the way Lake Michigan smells. And tastes.

[lettered]

See, being lake-bred, I find the smell of oceans disconcerting!

I didn't grow up near Lake Michigan, but it was my main experience of a big body of water for many, many years. Now I live in Seattle, and I'm still astonished by the smell of the sea.