Closing Time

I hope you were among the fortunate souls who spent last weekend at their lake homes or cabins. I met several such folks as I took a solo paddle, my last of the season, around the shoreline of Birch Lake, at Harshaw.

This was a prototype October Saturday afternoon, clear sky, temperature mid-50s, the softest of breezes, the lake’s surface smooth, oaks and birches still holding their colored leaves, the air scented like (to borrow a phrase from Garrison Keillor) fine brandy.

When traveling alone in our red Kevlar Old Town, I always assume the bow seat and paddle stern first; sitting farther amidships keeps the canoe flat instead of nose-up in the water. At this season there’s something appropriate about paddling “backwards”: The trip is more about looking back than forward.

You tend to think, as autumn closes down, on what was instead of what will be. My annual spring canoe reconnaissances are about watching for life in the shallows, spotting painted turtles released from hibernation, following smallmouth bass across the reef on the lake’s east end, spying on walleyes hunkered deep in sunken tangles of brush.

On this mid-October ride, there was of course little life to observe other than a somewhat heavier-than-usual clouding of green algae. The fish had gone deep. Several small ducks in a cluster skittered away and up well before I could get close enough for an identification.

I did encounter several lake neighbors enjoying the day in various ways: one man disassembling a pier, ratchet wrench periodically rasping; another enjoying a drink while seated atop a short stairway of timbers; a woman at the end of a pier with a small black dog that barked at me sharply; a man and wife prepping a pontoon boat for storage, two fishermen in boats working rocky points, presumably for muskies.

From here on there would be few days like this. It’s hard at such times not to regret the decline of the seasons and to long, far prematurely, for spring. It’s too soon to embrace the idea of November’s bleakness and then the long winter. So, while taking in the glory of the day, we tend to scan back over the good times of spring and summer past.

As I pulled the Old Town from the lake and tipped it over on shore, for the last time until next year, the couple from three lots down paddled by in their canoe, just two more lake country folks lucky enough to enjoy this day, around or on the water.