An absolutely stunning weekend for fall in Minnesota lake country—sunny, 80s, breeze on the lake. I took the ol’ canoe out to take a look from closer to the elements…. From the canoe you can see the sparkling reflection of the firey fall trees on the water, pumpkin and straw tones among the dark green drenched by the blue sky. I reflected that outside of North America’s north country there are few places in the world that offer this panorama of color I the fall. In England, leaves just drop brown among the gloom and drizzle.
The sun’s angle changes by minute, the diamonds in a showcase of small ripples of the water—a breeze lifts the slow sparkle to a shimmer of movement, like a sea of faces at a football touchdown. Above my canoe, seagulls weave in flocks, tracking the air with endless patterns swirling toward the south they know soon will be their destination. They alight on the water, I paddle toward them, and they rustle into flight in a sheet, a white flutter of paper parallel to the sunny surface.
Not much human momentum on the lake; a fisherman’s canoe and a couple small boats at the north end. It is too cold already for the skiers and tubers of summer. I hear a loon strike up a wail, and a faraway chain saw adds its guttural percussion. A radio blares form a cabin, briefly; I can’t tell quite where it’s coming from. Bu mostly the lake is left to the birds and the sun and the breeze.
How peculiar, I think, to reflect that in less than three weeks I’ll be back in old urban hustle, so different from this world.
—Big Sugar Bush Lake, Ogema, Minn., Sept. 17, 1989
OtD 