PANORAMAS

Whether veiled in rain, arched against the wind, burdened with snow, or set aflame with light, the lake endures—sovereign, untouchable. Its constancy is a paradox, for its visage forever slips away. At dawn it is crystal, by dusk an abyss of shadow; at times a fragile ripple stirred by breath, at others a vast mirror that swallows the sky.

Its metamorphoses are manifold, born of winds, of clouds, of the mountains that bind it. The Alps, like shifting crowns, make of it a stained glass, a pedestal, or else erase it, dissolving it into fields of color. Then it is no longer lake, but a trembling canvas: pockets of hue overlap, collide, and sink—Rothko himself might have dreamt it.

To gaze upon this liquid stage is to forget water, to forget earth. One drifts instead through an open-air museum, where the imagination spreads without end. And always, at the threshold of dream, Lavaux keeps its watch—silent guardian of visions that vanish like breath.