This is a photo of Lake
Olsina in Southern Bohemia. I can walk here from my Czech house. It’s
a very special place for me. It is set in a natural bowl formed by
the surrounding hills. One of its attractions is that it is
undisturbed. Much of the surrounding forests are in a military zone,
which means that it is accessible only at weekends and that building
is restricted in the locality.
The lake is man-made –
a renaissance fishpond, which is still farmed today. Every other
Autumn (in October or November) the sluices are opened and the lake
drained. The carp are herded into the nets of the waiting fishermen.
My friend Hannah had an old cottage next to the lake and I stayed
with her one year, waking at 6 to watch the harvest. Crowds gathered
to watch and buy fresh fish. When everyone had gone, it was the turn
of the water birds to arrive – gulls of course, but also herons and
white egrets.
At other times I have
watched the mating dance of crested grebes rising and bowing on the
still surface of the lake. In the summer Hannah and I would go
swimming in the lake’s now warm waters, with the carp blowing
bubbles around us or we would wander into the forest to collect wild
mushrooms.
On the day of Hannah’s
funeral I came to Olsina and launched a little paper boat on the
waters in remembrance of her. In the boat’s prow I set a picture
she had painted of a man waving. The boat bobbed in the current
before disappearing round a small headland. My farewell said, I
returned to my car and drove home. Later when I looked closer at the
picture I saw that it was titled “Crossing Lethe.”
