Lake Needwood was very pleasant and filled with the Thanksgiving/Chrismas smell of a crisp winter forest. I hadn't gone to Rock Creek Park in a bit, and was surprised to notice that the trees were bare. I went into Rock Creek to gather the temperature vs. depth data with the temperature probe on the yardstick. I was wearing Milla's boots because I was the only one with feet small enough, except maybe Milla. We were trying to find a place with a depth of 60 centimeters, so I had waded into the center of the creek disregarding the water gushing into the boots and soaking my socks. I hadn't realized it would be so cold, or that the current could apply such insistent and constant pressure. I'd always thought the water would flow around me. I came back up and took off my socks and wrung them out and hung them out to dry on a tree branch and let other people do the rest of the data points. It would not prevent Ed and Milla from cuddling on the leafy bank later while I watched the water pour across a line of rocks in little rapids. Something I noticed was, the water never stops moving. (Well duh.) The ripples and the foam, the light and the shadow, is all caused by water rushing away from me, replaced by the same amount of water coming towards me, and yet from a distance, or to someone not paying attention, it looks as still and as clear as glass and as constant as if the water were a solid and unmoving sheet.

Afterwards, we had a lot of free time to just play around. We found that Rob and Dena balanced each other out on the seesaw, me and Alex balanced out Rob and Dena, and me and Alex balanced out each other. I picked up a nice walking stick David had hurled into the field as a javelin. I played on the swings to the creaking of chains. We took a walk around the lake, gleaming under the ashen sky and bare trees like unpolished metal.