The Past Cannot Be Changed

In an essay, called "Once More to the Lake", E.B White remembers joyful days which he used to spend by a lake in Maine. After the first journey which was almost successful, excluding the fact that his family got ringworms and his father rolled over in a canoe, they returned to the lake summer after summer. The nostalgia of the lake enforces White to revisit the haunts. White takes along his son who has never had any fresh water up his nose .During the journey, Elwyn Brooks White wonders how the place might have been changed since he had visited it last time. On arrival, everything looked pretty much the same. Subsequently, the author starts complaining about some changes. People are coming to the lake in their own cars; however, before, the vacationers used to make a long trip from the train station to the lake in a farm wagon. "There had been no years" - keeps repeating the author. There was a mirage, an illusion that nothing has changed. Nevertheless, the writer was confused who he really is, a father with his son, or himself with his own father. Gradually he begins to comprehend the fact that many things have really changed: there were two-track roads from the farmhouse to dinner instead of 3 as it used to be before. The hair of the waitresses in the dining room is not dirty anymore. The noise of the boards let the author know that the placidity of the lake is disturbed now. The years were not a mirage. He realized that his son is going to swim but he does not have any thoughts of going inside the water. He understood that he became older and finally he will die. The chill of death filled White's groin. He cannot return to his childhood; the past cannot be changed.