Friday, May 2, 2014

How we met: Duck Lake

Every romance story starts with how they met. How did your romance with your lake begin? My story begins with Duck Lake – I have known it since I was eight years old. It lies in the big woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, just over Wisconsin line from the little town of Land O' Lakes. It’s about two miles long, shaped something like a plump L with a short horizontal stroke.

A co-worker of my father owned a cabin on Duck Lake. He and his two sons took my dad, my older brother and me there for a visit on a Memorial Day weekend. It was there I saw eagles and loons for the first time, and heard the hammering of pileated woodpeckers deep in the forest. How to describe the allure of the North? The trees are taller, the white pines especially standing in majesty. The wind sounds different. Storms loom larger; thunder booms across the vast stretches of woods and water. The night woods are full of animal noises, rustles and footfalls. Loon calls ring out over the lake – what benignly demented sort of deity would create such a creature as a loon?

My family rented that cabin one or two weeks each summer until I was in my early 20s. A great fishing spot lay just a few dozen oar strokes out from the cabin. We fished there morning to dusk, two or three of us kids in each boat with mom or dad. As I grew older, I took a 14-foot wooden rowboat on fishing explorations from one end of the lake to the other. Since then I’ve fished Duck once or twice a year almost without fail and have come to know it well. The public boat landing is right next to the old cabin property; that spot in front of the cabin is still the best spot on the lake.


In future posts I’ll tell you about my other two loves, Dinner and Birch lakes. Meantime, what’s the story of your favorite lake? How did you two meet?

1 comment:

  1. Since you ask, I have to say Lake Michigan. I spent my first 8 years in Algoma, and often walked out to the end of the breakwater, maybe 100 yards from shore. And then I'd just sit there, surrounded by the sound of surf, and watch the waves. It was an almost zen-like experience. I never did any fishing in LM though.

    But I suspect what you wanted to hear about was smaller lakes, and it that case I'd have to say Pigeon Lake (which I also never fished), but that was the site of Camp Sinawa, where I learned to canoe and snorkel, slept overnight on the central island, and had a bunch of fun times with Troop 27.

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