Early October Weekend at a Salem Lakes House

A house weekend in Salem Lakes, Wisconsin — a long haul from Truckee, and a village that has only existed as one since 2011, when the old town of Salem merged with Silver Lake. It's Kenosha County lake country, waterfront homes strung around Camp Lake, Hooker Lake, Silver Lake. The house sits on one of them, with a deck along the back, rocking chairs and a hot tub out there, and the water showing through the trees at the bottom of the lawn.

The oaks were what I hadn't expected. Big, old, leaning ones, scattered across the yard in loose groves rather than lining anything, trunks going up and out in every direction. Walked under them for a while and the canopy is still mostly green for the first week of October, though there are leaves down in the grass already, brown ones ahead of the color.

One of the trees near the flowerbeds tilts so far toward the lake it looks like it should have fallen decades ago. It hasn't. There's a ring of stones around the shrubs at its base like somebody committed to it staying.