Rising Waters

The lake is still rising. The shoreline along the malecón has disappeared, the shorebirds that used to strut on stilted legs along the water’s edge are now nesting in the trees, and the playground, once many yards from the gently lapping waves, is now a water-park for the fish as they dart between the submerged swings and teeter-totters. The rains began early this year and they continue.

In a typical year the rain begins in mid June and tapers off beginning in mid October, but it’s now December and it rained again a few days ago.  This is Mexico’s largest lake, about 7.5 miles wide and 50 miles long. The Lerma River starts its journey about 435 miles away near the city of Toluca and  eventually empties into Lake Chapala, so the total watershed is a massive area of about 20,000 square miles, and the lake level will continue to rise over the next few weeks. It’s astonishing to think about how much water is required to raise the level of water by even an inch!

Water laps ever higher against the short wall that protects the line of restaurants along the waterfront, and pelicans paddle between the trees now seemingly standing a-tip-toe in the neck-high water. The boardwalk has disappeared into the marshes, the picnic tables and stone benches sit like remnants of Atlantis at the bottom of a goldfish bowl. 

But the kayaks that required a struggle across yards of pebbled shoreline to launch into the lapping tide can now be slid directly from the rack into knee-deep water, and the long journey from the town pier down the flight of stone stairs to the tour boats is now only a step or two. 

And next July as we bask in the unrelenting heat of the summer sun as it shimmers across this slowly evaporating lake, we’ll look back and marvel at how this could ever have seemed alarming, and boastfully inform our disbelieving visitors just how high the water used to be.