"Am I sad? Not at all. Because everything about that lake was imprinted on my mind when it held so little and was so eager for information., it will be my lake as long as I live. I have no wish to visit it, for I have it all right here. I happened to see it last spring from about six miles up, on a flight from Louisville to Chicago. It was as emotionally uninvolving as a bit of dry dust viewed under a microscope. Again: That wasn't the real Maxincuckee down there. The real one is in my head. "The one in my head is the one I swam across, all two and one-half miles of it, when I as eleven years old, with my sister, five years older than me, and my brother, nine years older than me, in a leaky rowboat near me, urging me on. My sister died thirty years ago. My brother, an atmospheric scientist, is still going strong, daydreaming about clouds and electricity. Time change, but my lake never will.