MISQUAH — The Mud Lake Property Owners’ Association held its annual meeting Tuesday evening in the back room of the Daybreak Café. Two members attended, which the secretary recorded as “a quorum, if we’re being generous, and we generally are, there being only the two of us to be generous toward.”

The meeting, gaveled in at 6 p.m. and adjourned by 6:35, moved briskly through the full agenda. President Dorothy Knutson delivered the treasurer’s report — a balance of $43.18 and a hardware-store coupon nearing expiration — and the association reaffirmed, as it does each year, its official position that Mud Lake is “the most underrated lake on the Chain.” That position has gone unchallenged for as long as anyone present could recall, on the logic, Knutson explained, that “to be underrated, a thing first has to be rated, and so far as we know nobody has ever rated Mud Lake at all, which we have decided to take as a compliment.”

Discussion turned, as it does most years and occupied most of the thirty-five minutes, to renaming the lake. “Crystal Lake” was put forward by the other member in attendance and withdrawn after Knutson observed that the lake is “neither crystal nor, in most spots, technically a lake — it’s more of a wide, ambitious wetland with delusions, and I say that with love, because I own forty feet of it.” The bluegills off the south weed bed were reported excellent, as they are every year and as no one outside the room is permitted to learn.

The association noted that the swimming remains good “once you’re past the soft part,” acknowledged under questioning that the soft part constitutes most of the lake, and observed that the four nesting loons appear wholly indifferent to the lake’s name, rating, or reputation, “which,” Knutson said, “is the example the rest of us ought to follow.” The pie social, traditionally the meeting’s principal event and its real reason for being, will reconvene Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Daybreak. All are welcome, members and skeptics alike.