My first glimpse of the lake is a bright flash of silver through the trees. I’ve been walking through forested hills for days, and have no idea where I am or what the lake’s name or story might be. It sits uncomfortably disjointed in my mind, without proper connections. A lone island of information. Perhaps I can build it into an archipelago one day.

I pause to sit on a sunny rock on the shore and trail my fingers through the water. Sunlight glitters off ripples and the scales of darting fish who come to investigate. A few peck at my fingers before realizing there’s no food there. Scores of memories rise in my mind, bobbing to the surface. Long, lazy days spent fishing, sometimes catching nothing but never minding. Tiny fish nibbling at my toes as warm waves wash around me. Stopping to rest on a rock by a pond, setting our heavy backpacks down and eating granola bars as we stare out across the water and the mountains rising beyond.

Each memory has so many others connected to it, a tangled web that quickly grows out of control, threatening to overwhelm me again. I push the rush of memories away and stand. In the mud by my foot, I spot something that doesn’t belong. I bend down to pick it up and rinse it clean.

It’s a small toy car. The blue paint is chipped and faded, the metal corroded in places. Dirt fills every line and crack; one wheel is missing, and the rest don’t turn. I hold it in my palm, letting it catch the sunlight. It’s always surprising to me, the things that last. The things that didn’t. Cities and monuments meant to stand forever have crumbled, bunkers built to weather the worst the world could throw at them proved not enough. And yet here it is, a child’s toy that through some strange stroke of luck has outlived all of them. That might outlive me. Some child must have dropped this so many years ago, before everything went wrong. And here it sat, through mud and snow and ash and time, waiting to be found. This is why I’m here, this is why I’ve chosen to travel. There’s nothing to rebuild, even if I were capable of such a thing. But I can witness and record. All the things humanity left behind.

I set the car back down before I leave. I follow the shore of the lake, sending a flight of ducks into the air, protesting my strange presence. Not far beyond the lake I stumble onto the remnants of a road, the pavement broken apart by frost and roots to become nothing but cracked and pitted gray slabs scattered among the trees, half hidden by undergrowth. I follow it carefully out of the mountains, to whatever I’ll find beyond.

Green-gold sunlight falls in slanted rays through the trees, lighting the fragmented highway to nowhere and the small white flowers that grow there.