The Seasonal Lake Formation Records
Citation
For the reliable, unprompted creation of water bodies where none were planned, and for returning to the same addresses, year upon year, with the constancy of a tide.
The Account
The seasonal lake formation records document one of the city’s most dependable natural phenomena: the appearance, within minutes of the first sustained rain, of lakes at junctions and basements that the maps insist are dry.
These are not random floods. They are returns. The same underpass, the same arrivals lane, the same lower level of the same parking structure — each fills, year after year, to roughly the same depth, on roughly the same date, as faithfully as any migrating bird.
The institution’s natural history unit has catalogued fourteen confirmed formations, several of which have developed their own modest ecologies and at least one of which now hosts an annual, unofficial regatta of inflatable mattresses.
The records are kept not to lament the water but to honour its constancy. In a city where so little can be relied upon, the lakes return without fail. There is, the institution notes, a strange comfort in that.