It’s easy to think of a lake as a pool of water in which to drop
a fishing lure or on which to float a boat, canoe or air mattress. But your
lake is really a collection of worlds, each in its own way teeming with life.
There’s the water’s edge where otters prowl the sandy fringes, where deer slip
out from the cover of the trees to drink, and where eagles and ospreys perch in
tall pines and scan the wavelets. The air above the water is another world, of
those big raptors soaring and circling; of buzzing dragonflies, silent and
delicate damselflies, and flying insects of many descriptions; of mallards and
mergansers arrowing overhead.
On the surface we find ducks and loons skimming; the occasional
muskrat dragging strands of cattail leaves; clusters of darting black beetles;
water striders floating on surface tension, propelled by oarlike legs;
ephemeral mayflies with wings raised like sails; and painted and snapping
turtles, snouts poking skyward, sipping the air. Beneath the surface the lake
is a thin soup of microscopic plant and animal plankton, base of the food chain
for fish, not just those we like to catch but for many small and secretive
species we rarely see, even if we peer into their world through a glass mask
while snorkeling.
The bottom sand and muck are marked with the serpentine trails
of clams and mussels and speckled with the curled shells of snails and the
molts of crayfish. Buried in the sediment lie an assortment of worms, along
with immature forms of various flies and other insects,
metamorphosing. And that’s not even counting the different zones of
vegetation; the variations in bottom character (rock, gravel, sand, muck); the
dropoffs, flats and mid-lake humps; or the temperature-related strata of the
water itself. Or, for that matter, the way these and all the other worlds
change with the seasons.
Yes, every lake is
much more than what appears to the casual viewer. And every lake rewards those
who look closer and deeper.
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