The Return of Lake X
The View
Arriving at the guard shack early that morning was pure nostalgia. Here I was again, after all these years, staring down that long cypress-sided avenue at what had always seemed like an ineffably mysterious compound; a place where extraordinary happenings were simply part of the deal. Through my windshield, I could vaguely make out the assortment of beige concrete-block buildings in the distance, with the big, round, signature spaceship windows, and the observation tower way out on the water’s edge, looking like it came straight out of a science-fiction thriller.
How many years had it been? Twenty? Twenty-five? It didn’t matter, really—certainly the last time I’d visited Lake X, I’d arrived long before the 2004 shutdown, long before anybody at Mercury Marine or Mercury Racing had even countenanced the possibility of pulling the plug on arguably the most famous, most sophisticated, and most confidential marine testing facility in the world.
The gate trundled back, thanks to an early-rising Mercury
