Ominous shore

I’ve never until now been down at the shore at night during one of these carnival snowfalls; these bright peaceful wet snowfalls where the ground is white with it and the sky immediately overhead glows with it and everything is gently illuminated by added streetlight reflection.

But standing, looking out at what should be the sea (a great lake officially), the view is arrested and without glimmer. It is no usual vista tonight nor occasional wall of fog. It is instead a dark translucence. A thick, blurry realm with a darkest imprecise layer where the horizon should be, but pressing unnaturally close to the shore, just out of reach.

Without this glowing shoreline modernity, the lake would be left alone in the darkness I suppose. A simple void, unpenetrated; unperverted.

I have never seen a natural space so visually unsettling; gloomy; foreboding. Like a giant filthy window pane; like a dome which seals from some most final dystopia. It is the edge of some dark unstable half-world.