Since childhood, I've had this approach/avoidance thing with large bodies of water at night. What is clear, refreshing and welcoming in daylight becomes inky, impenetrable and mysterious after dark. Lake Michigan, the Pacific, the Atlantic, even little Green Lake in rural West Michigan: during the day, I see my feet and rippled sand of the bottom like miniature dunes. But at night it's black; below the surface, nothing is visible. What's beneath? I don't know. I can't see. All I can do is wait to be touched, surprised, grabbed.

Occasionally, growing up on the shore of Lake Michigan, we'd get news of a body–someone lost from a boat, someone swept from the pier–discovered miles up the beach, in shallow water…like the water in front of our house. My boyhood nightmare: swimming after dark, stepping on the soft, yielding, decomposing body.

As an adult, I've been in this black, immutable water in the dark of night, watched and felt the rising and falling of silent swells, the lake's breathing. I've sat on cement piers, surrounded by the surging, inscrutable, smooth, heaving of the Pacific, just a few feet away.

I'm fascinated. Drawn. Repelled. In awe.

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.