Summers at the Lake (eBook)

In autumn and early winter, after I’ve closed up camp and returned to Albuquerque, the city of the pavements gray, the lake seems incredibly distant in both time and space, seems almost to be unreal. But in mid-winter, as the days gradually lengthen and the sun’s warmth increases, I find myself thinking about the place where I’ll be arriving when the snows have melted and the white petals of the service berries have floated gently to the ground. As the countdown to the time of departure begins, I begin planning and preparation. The journey is a happy one, filled with the pleasures of anticipation. The incidents of travel and arrival may vary in details, but emotions stirred are always similar: an increasing excitement of returning to and reconnecting with the life of a place I have loved for so many decades.

Dreaming of Trails

Last night, I sat before a small winter fire watching the flames flicker and then turn into glowing coals. I’d been reading one of my Christmas gifts, Robert Moor’s On Trails: an Exploration, an interesting collection of autobiographical, historical, descriptive, philosophical and meditative essays structured around an account of his hiking the 2,193 mile Appalachian Trail.

My mind wandered to the Little Cabin in the Big Woods, and I started to doze, dreaming of trails. It frequently happens sometime in January when I realize that in four or five months, I’ll be arriving back at Crooked Lake. Then I start envisioning the trails I’ll be walking, pedaling, or paddling along when I get there. These won’t be major expeditions, just short excursions along familiar paths.

The first path will be down to and then along the lakeshore. I think about the excitement I’ll feel as I reach the dock and see how high or low the water level is. Then I’ll stroll along the shore noticing where the long green blades of the iris plants will soon thrust above the water, bringing their promise of blue flowers to come. I’ll check to see if the wild rose bush has made it through the winter, remembering how, many springs ago, I’d go early each morning to pick a bud, bring it home, put it in a brandy snifter, and place it on the table where Carol and I would sit, sipping our coffee and looking out the window at the light of the rising sun playing on the trees across the lake.

Fig. 1-1: Wild Rose

Later in the day, I’ll pedal my old bike along two different trails. On the first, a two track behind our place, I’ll go very slowly, casting my eyes right and left, looking for clumps of blueberry bushes. If I arrive earlier in the season, there will be little white blossoms; if it’s later, there will be young berries, hard little green bbs. But I’ll be able to forecast how bountiful the harvest will be in late July.

Late in the afternoon, I’ll put on my bright yellow safety vest and pedal out to the highway to pick up the Mining Journal. If there’s not too much traffic and I’m fortunate, I may see reminders I’m biking through a wild forest: a deer bounding across the road ahead of me before crashing through the underbrush; a snapping turtle planting itself defiantly in the middle of the road, glaring angrily as if daring me to pass; a small owl on a branch twisting its head to get a better look at the strange wheeled creature who’s going “whoo, whoo” at it.

And finally, I’ll imagine a morning when the lake is calm and, for the first time of the season, I’ll follow its invisible trails, paddling a few strokes and then gliding through the mist rising from the water, enjoying the aroma of someone’s breakfast bacon carried by the slight breeze, feeling the thrill of the sudden and brief appearance of a loon’s head, or smiling at the harsh squawks of a far-off sand hill crane, whose laryngitis-like calls belie its stately nature.

My head drops to my chest, my book falls from my hands onto the floor. I snap awake. The fire has turned into embers. I pick up the book, turn out the lights, and head to bed, thinking that in several weeks, these reveries will be realities.

Sounds in the Night

Last night, I was awakened by the piercing and angry snarl of a motorcycle as it jack-rabbited out from a stop sign onto a main Albuquerque street not far away. Had the cyclist many miles to go before he could sleep? Or was he taking joy at killing the peaceful slumbers of people living close to the stop sign?

Twenty minutes later, the mournful wail of a police siren filled the night. Had there been a serious, even fatal auto accident? Had there been yet another murder in this large southwestern city?

And then, not long after, came the POP, POP, POP of gunfire from the place, a few blocks to the east, that the locals call the “War Zone.” Had angry words been exchanged in the parking lot of a bar, and had someone tried to punctuate the words of the argument with a Saturday night special? Or had a driver slowed down to fire at the front windows of what he thought was the home of an enemy?

When the quiet returned, I thought about what sounds I might hear if it were late spring and I were awake at a lake so far away.

Perhaps the haunting ululations of a loon would float across the water, as a partner signaled to its mate that all was well and that it would soon be back at the nest to warm the eggs that would crack open with new life in a few days.

Perhaps the leaves of the popple outside my window rustle in the predawn breeze or a pine cone hits the roof with a soft thud and rolls across the shingles and lands on the ground where a few of its seeds might sprout into tiny young trees.

Or perhaps the scolding of a squirrel who is not really scolding, but announcing to whomever it has awakened that the new day was coming and that it was great to be noisily alive.

And, with these sounds in my mind, I drifted back to sleep.

Counting Sleeps

When we were kids, our parents taught us counting songs so that we could learn our numbers – “One, two, buckle my shoe; three, four, shut the door.” Then, when Andrew and Clare were little, we used to all chant the ditty from “Sesame Street” – “One, two, three, four, five, watch the bees go in the hive.” Over six decades ago, my sisters and I amused ourselves in the car by tallying out-of-state license plates. Most were from Washington, Oregon, and California, but once I proudly spotted one from some place called Michigan.

Now that I’m entering my second childhood, I’m reverting to counting games. I’ve invented one called “Counting Sleeps.” That’s not a typo. I’m like an impatient, excited little kid calculating how long it will be until Santa arrives.

My count doesn’t begin in November and it’s not about Christmas. It usually begins in very early spring, as the days are getting longer and warmer, and it’s about arriving back at the lake that I’d left many long months ago. By the end of September it seemed like I’ve been gone forever and that my return was ice ages away. In March, there may be ice on the lake, but I can already imagine it when the sun is glinting off the water and the fishermen are casting from boats, not huddling in fishing shanties around holes cut in the ice.

I try to be patient and usually start by counting the sleeps left only once a week. But when the anticipation is too great, I drift to sleep imagining that there are no sleeps left and that I’m passing through Green Bay for the last four hours of a drive that began three days earlier. I see us putting into Jack’s Market in Manistique, buying just enough supplies to last for the days I’ll be recovering from the trek. I see the turnoff from M-94 to the road winding through the forest toward the cabin.

Hankie is leaning his labradoodle head out the car window, sniffing intently. I park behind the cabin and open the car door. He leaps out and tears around in circles, releasing energy pent up during the long trip. I pause, listening to hear if there’s a nasty mosquito buzzing next to my ear.

Even before unpacking, I head down to the lake to see how well the dock has weathered the winter and how high the water level is. Then I unlock the door and smell the mustiness of the long-closed interior and begin to unpack the supplies of summer: clothes, books, notes, paper, writing supplies, food, and some craft beer from New Mexico or that I’ve picked up along the way.

The images in my head can’t change the fact that it’s still March and that there’s still ice on the lake. I’ve got lots to get done and miles to drive before I have my first sleep at the cabin. But sometimes the reveries of anticipation get me so excited that I have trouble getting to sleep.

Here … and There

I’m watching a black-chinned hummingbird hovering in front of the flowers of the yellow bird-of-paradise shrub just outside my office window in Albuquerque. And I’m thinking of a ruby-throated hummingbird hovering in front of the screen porch at the lake, checking to see if I’ve refilled the feeder.

I see the tiny lavender-blue flowers of the Russian sage out by the sidewalk. And I’m thinking of the rich blue and purple irises that, in mid-June, will be in full bloom in the swamp beside the road.

Hankie and Trina are tearing around raising great clouds...