Life on the Lake

This afternoon after work, I decided to forego the Nordic Track and take a walk along the lake. It was a very windy evening, and the lakeshore looked more like the ocean, with breakers rolling in from far out in the water. I walked south today... a change from my usual running route that takes me north around the curve on Sheridan and along the Evanston lakefront. No, today I ambled south along Eastlake Terrace, cutting through an alley to Fargo to look at one of my favorite courtyard buildings in all of Chicago. I was surprised to see that it is still an apartment building, since so many of the really lovely apartment buildings in Rogers Park have been converted to condos in the last five years or so.

Anyway, on the way back home, I decided to sit on the "seawall" at Juneway Beach (the nearest beach to us and the northernmost beach in Chicago) and watch the waves roll in for a while. There, on the beach itself, were a man and his golden retriever playing fetch in the water. Well, the dog was in the water. The man had some kind of a device by which he could send a tennis ball wa-a-a-y out into the water, and the retriever would swim out to it, bobbing on the incoming swells and breakers and swimming diligently and single-mindedly to reach the ball, take it in his mouth, and practically body surf his way back to the shore. Time and again, he would emerge from the cold lake water, shake himself off, come up the beach to his master, drop the ball, and then make his way back into the water before his master could even fit the ball into the contraption and launch it into the lake. Finally, it was the master, not the dog, who tired of the game. He gave a signal, and the dog bounded back up off the beach and onto the grass, where the two played more catch. They were still doing so when I left the park and headed around the corner and home.