Our spring is here, and it is lovely! The forsythia bloomed, the red bud trees blossomed out, the lilacs filled the air with their delightful scent, and now the lupine are blooming. I was driving down the road, turned a corner, and there was an embankment filled with lupine. The breeze would catch their upright blooms and they would dance, swaying back and forth. It was as if they too were welcoming the warmth of the sun and the joy of spring.
The morning started with clouds and the promise of a spring day. Our brown landscape was showing shades of green, the trees were starting to bud, and the rush of spring birds were beginning to migrate through the area. The lake was calling me, and by the time I hauled my kayak to the shoreline the clouds were parting a bit to allow the sun to streak through. It was going to be a glorious morning – a perfect time to be on the lake.
Quietly I paddled the perimeter, and with each stroke I was reminded of the muscles that I hadn’t used since last fall. I observed the docks and boats that had been put into the lake, flushed a group of wood ducks further down the shoreline, and reveled in the crisp morning air. It was a delightful half hour to absorb spring with all my senses. As I approached the end of my journey I was greeted by the resident loon pair swimming in front of the beach, as if they were welcoming me back to their lake.
With a quick plummet of the temperatures we are now in winter. Our unusually long and temperate autumn has disappeared. The ducks and geese have departed for warmer areas and open water. Only the oak trees are hanging on to their brittle brown leaves, rattling in the cold wind. The ground is starting to freeze, the snow is starting to fall, and the ice is forming. There’s a hush that settles in during winter — a peace and quiet all its own.
We’ve recently returned from a three-week road trip to visit family and explore new places. We experienced sun and heat, smoke-filled days and nights, a full moon, and a sky filled with countless stars. We traveled through miles of corn, soybeans, sunflowers, grasslands, badlands, prairies, mountains, and black hills. The diversity and beauty of our country is truly amazing.
On our return to Minnesota we stayed one night at Lake Shetek State Park in the southwestern part of the state. As we explored the park and lake we walked across a causeway connecting the lake shoreline to Loon Island. The causeway was constructed as part of a WPA program. Earlier in the day I had seen a family swimming and relaxing at the end of the causeway. But as I walked again in the calm of late evening my attention was drawn to these rocks that extended from the sandy beach into the lake. Their pattern seemed to be welcoming me back to the land of 10,000 lakes and asking me to come along, follow each one, into the coolness of the lake.
It was still early in the morning. The red sun had risen and managed to shine its light through the smoke and haze that has blanketed our area. There were swallows sweeping above and over the lake, gathering insects, resting on the pontoon cover, then continuing their aerial acrobatics. Occasionally I could hear a bird off in the distance. But as I sat at the end of the dock, my attention was focused about 20 yards in front of me. A loon was gracefully floating by, intent on things other than my presence. It went to the south, then to the north, and then it dove under the surface. After what seemed like an unusually long time, it reappeared…with a snail and some greenery that it found on the lake bottom. It floated by me, turned, dropped everything from its beak, dove down again, and disappeared for another long time, only to resurface way out in the center of the lake.
I treasure these simple moments – the quiet of the morning, the birds, fish, and animals doing what they do in the early hours of daylight, and the ritual that has played out for decades and eons. And I try to imagine someone sitting by this same lake shore observing a similar moment one hundred, two hundred, maybe three hundred years ago.
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