Some Of The Loons Are On The Lake
I was taking my regular constitutional around
Birch Lake last week, mulling over the state of my world: The winter was long
and gloomy, punctuated by stretches of genuine blackness involve war, famine,
pestilence, corporate greed which more and more resembles the behavior of the
mob but without the barber shop “rub outs,” venal and small-minded
politicians, misbehaving members of the clergy, a press dependent on
governmental and military hand-outs, increasing intrusion on our private lives
by government bureaucrats, and stupidity creeping across the land to the point
where one wonders if anybody is thinking
anywhere.
At about this point, I
begin fantasizing about moving to a cottage on an island off the coast of
Scotland, but without The New York Times at my door each day and Diet-Rite in
the fridge, I’d say the chances are slim. I have always admired Huck
Finn but can no more light out for the West than ply a raft down the Mississippi
River.
As I came to the Northwest
corner of the lake, I had achieved a state of darkness which was making me angry
– angry at the world and angry at me for being angry during a perfectly
decent walk around a smallish but attractive
lake.
Then I saw them. A pair of
loons diving just off the shore. Loons, our state bird here in Minnesota,
plumage of black and white in varied patterns, incredibly adept in the water,
clumsy on land, and linear in the air. Birds with an air of mystery because of
their diving abilities, but most of all, their strange and haunting calls which
come echoing across the eons and the water into your core, unrelentingly
unforgettable.
He was alert and
protective while she continued to dive around him. Gradually, they moved off
toward the center of the
lake.
We’ve had a nesting pair
of loons on the lake since I moved here twenty-five years ago. Most years,
there is a baby loon, and once in while, two. Sometimes in my kayak I can drift
quietly within fifty feet of them before they disappear under the waves, and
every once in a while a loon will come up from a dive within a few feet of me
– we are both equally surprised, and the loon disappears back under the
water and pops up some distance away in a few
seconds.
The fact that the loons
were back on the lake was the best news bulletin I’d gotten in weeks. I
doubt any of the inhabitants of the cars speeding by me took note of the loons
– too busy on the cell phone, eating breakfast on the move, chatting with
a passenger, thinking about work to see that the loons had returned to the
lake.
But the arrival of our loons
was the best news I’d gotten in months, and I was grateful. So I went
home poured myself a fresh cup of coffee, sat down at the dining room table,
looked out at the loons as they moved off to the East, and felt some of the
accumulated tension of the recent past begin to ease its way out of my
body.
Spring had arrived in more
places than I might have thought.
Posted: Mon - November 24, 2003 at 04:44 PM