All days, all times, all seasons, all weather

When our daughter was a few months old (this was 31 years ago) a wise grandmotherly co-worker advised, “Be sure to take a picture of Sonya crying.” Her larger point was to remember children not just when all smiles on their birthdays but in all times and in all moods. So it is with the lakes we love. To know them is to visit them in all seasons, at all times of day, in all weather.

On this cold, windy, wet, miserable weekend just past, I was tempted to pass Sunday by just sulking in the cabin, waiting for a better day. Instead, after a long late-afternoon walk along the town roads, I took the stairway to our lakefront and stood at the end of the pier. As typical of the whole weekend, grey billowy clouds scudded along on the wind, here and there showing a patch of blue sky. The northwest wind put a forbidding chop on the water. Intermittent rain spotted my glasses. Then it all unfolded.

From over the white pines to the southwest came a bald eagle, then from the north, another. The two soared together for a while. Then one peeled off over the trees and the other sailed along the shoreline, slowly, into the wind, directly over my head, so straight up I had to look down at my feet and catch my bearings, making sure not to lose balance and topple into the water. The eagle made a couple of long, looping circles, then flew off to a perch in a pine off to the east.

Next, as if on cue, an osprey appeared above the trees along our shoreline, wings outstretched, motionless, driven downwind like a kite broken free of its tether, directly over where I stood. Then it looped back into the wind, made a few wide circles over the water, and looped back the way it had come. Over a reef on the lake’s east end, it hung in the air, wings beating steadily, just enough to neutralize the wind. It stayed there for at least a minute, then swung back my way again – yes, directly, absolutely straight overhead. And a few seconds behind it came the eagle again, soaring somewhat higher, closing the space between them until, if armed with a camera, I could have fit both into the viewfinder frame. They parted ways, the osprey east, the eagle west and upward. Both still patrolled the sky as I turned and headed back up the steps.

It’s an object lesson about knowing a lake. Visit it. No matter what. No matter how ugly the weather or your mood. You never know what rewards lie in store. For me, the rush of wind and waves and the rain in my face would have been enough. The eagle and osprey gave me a memory. Who knows what memories your lake waits to give you?