My lover the lake

The lake is a steady lover. My children grow, seasons come and go, romance sometimes thrills and sometimes disappoints, even friends change. But Lake Fletcher is always there, as near or as far as I make it.

This summer a large and delicate bough of meadow-rue (Thalictrum pubescens) has sprouted beside the dock. I've never seen it around this lake before. The other night as I was paddling, I noticed another clump of meadow-rue blooming delicately, pendently, in the same spot at the base of a neighbour's dock. It's as if the merganser had imported this plant from another lake and deposited seeds at each of her favourite roosts.

My daughters mourn the thought that anyone could destroy such a place as this. Someone on TV has given them too dark a picture. Their gloom reminds me of depressives obsessed with death, dreading the very fate that draws them in, forgetting that life is in the present. The lake is safe as long as we live it. As long as enough land owners treasure its unspoiled beauty, they will never give it away.

We have different birds nesting around our bay this year. The veeries that harboured a nest in stealth among bushes under the kitchen window last summer have moved away. So has the winter wren that once nested in the overturned bow of our second canoe. But this is the first time a hermit thrush has taken a post so close, weaving mysterious whistles behind the cottage at dusk. And this year a northern waterthrush makes daily forays along our shoreline. Faithful is the black-throated blue warbler who haunts the dense stand of hemlock saplings. As always, exuberant, garrulous cedar waxwings mob our treetops. And the industrious eastern phoebes are back on the ledge above our bathroom window.

My children, who once seemed immune to chilly water, have begun to balk. My eldest asks me if you get used to the coolness after years of swimming in it. No, it still bites. That's why I stand so long on the end of the dock, communing with the warm sun, the silent sky, the fragrant air.

It's like gentle lovemaking; the pleasure is in feeling well, savouring the beauty of the surface, the caress of sweet air. Anticipation is prolonged, and then comes a sudden plunge, the waters folding over and wholly embracing me, a body united with the fluid realm. From beneath, the surface shines metallic aqua. My arms of outstretched flesh plough furrows of silver.

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