"The rented lakes of my childhood" by Marge Piercy

I remember the lakes of my Michigan

childhood. Here they are called ponds.

Lakes belonged to summer, two-week

vacations that my father was granted by

Westinghouse when we rented some cabin.

Never mind the dishes with spiderweb

cracks, the crooked aluminum sauce

pans, the crusted black frying pans.

Never mind the mattresses shaped

like the letter V. Old jangling springs.

Moldy bathrooms. Low ceilings

that leaked. The lakes were mysteries

of sand and filmy weeds and minnows

flickering through my fingers. I rowed

into freedom. Alone on the water

that freckled into small ripples,

that raised its hackles in storms,

that lay glassy at twilight reflecting

the sunset then sucking up the dark,

I was unobserved as the quiet doe

coming with her fawns to drink

on the opposite shore. I let the row-

boat drift as the current pleased, lying

faceup like a photographer’s plate

the rising moon turned to a ghost.

And though the voices called me

back to the rented space we shared

I was sure I left my real self there-

a tiny black pupil in the immense

eye of a silver pool of silence.

"The rented lakes of my childhood" by Marge Piercy from Made in Detroit. © Knopf, 2015. 

Lake Report: Paradox and Random Events

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I went back to the lake last week for a second day in a row, and the lake was just as it has always been, and completely changed.

It's a paradox: two truths, equally true, yet seemingly contradictory. Some people believe in fairies; I believe in paradox, and I mean belief in its root meaning: "letting be." I used to drive myself crazy trying to reconcile paradoxes until I learned to simply accept them.

Fishing--or, more precisely, the fish--teach you that pretty quickly. You simply can't catch fish at will. What works one day doesn't work the very next day. You accept that, or you take up golf.

But the human race in general has never been good with paradox. Somehow we must make things be the way we want them to be rather than accept them the way they are. So we damn the unpredictable and uncontrollable, and thereby dam rivers.

We invented time to cast control over the paradoxical universe, to explain rationally the changes we see around us and so claim control of them. Thus the changes I saw in the lake in the space of twenty-four hours were due to the passage of time. So, too, the changes I see between the lake in Spring and the lake in Fall.

But the concept of time is based on linearity, and there is nothing linear about the lake or the universe we live in. Chaos theory gets closer to the truth of things: change simply pops up here, there, and everywhere, seemingly random and unconnected events, which yet form a pattern, that--pattern within countless patterns--forms the whole of what is. Change doesn't flow like a river; it bubbles up like springs, creating the new in the midst of the old. The natural world, like the universe, isn't going somewhere; it's expanding, building on itself, becoming what it always was, and is, and will be.

And it's happening right under my canoe. For example:

The wind was blowing hard from the south, so I went to the south end where I haven't been in awhile, and where, on windy days, there is some shelter.

I cast the Bomber into the riffles. It had worked great the day before, but not this day. It swam back to me each time rejected and forlorn. So I tied on the CDC caddis and hooked one little trout.

More fish were rising farther back in the south end just where the riffles gave way to calmer water, so I paddled over.

There were some good fish there, rising lazily and confidently. As I stripped in the CDC caddis for another cast this Brown took it. I was glad I had remembered the net.

I stayed with the caddis and caught a few more small fish.

And then this beauty.

It was getting cooler and the quick slide to darkness had begun when I hooked another Brown. I believe it was the fish of the day, but as I reached for the net I noticed it was gone. It must have slipped off my lap into the water as I was trying to handle that big Rainbow. I often wondered if it would float.
No.
When I attempted to lift the Brown into the canoe the fly came out and he was gone. But not forgotten.

So here's the quiz:
     1. How many random events can you find in the above account?
        (Answer: All of them.)
     2. How would you describe the whole formed by the totality of these random events?
        (Answer: A great time on the water.)

Lake Report: Final Countdown Begins

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October is almost half over, and I think we can say that the final countdown of the season has begun. I've had to struggle with a busy schedule to get to the lake recently, and, once you let the balance tip, once you stumble in your pace, it's amazing how something you love, something that provides a center for your life, quickly slides down on the priority list.

Then there's the matter of letting your eyes wander and losing focus. I admit I was lured away by the Henry's Fork, and even my own home river has tempted me with swirling Chinooks and secretive Steelhead. But the big trips are over, and my river can wait.

So I hereby vow to tip back the balance, step up the pace, and be on the water often enough to become once again a central character in the denouement of this season's story.

Today was a good start. I loaded up the canoe and accouterments and made my getaway up over the ridge and down to lakeside. It was clear, sunny, and warm. It was also windy. I started in my shirtsleeves, but when the sun dipped behind the mountain that summery wind began to blow fall.

I set up in the channel and threw the Bomber again and was delighted to see fish swirling at it, and even more delighted to have this pretty good fish take it with a vengeance. I had just decided to let off stripping and let it drift with the wind, and this fish preferred a sitting target.
I blew on up to the upper lake and kept up with the Bomber out in open water. Yes, it's open, but it's not that deep here, and trout lurk in the weed forests just out of sight below.
I exercised the Bomber options: I let it sit, and I stripped it. This Brown liked the strip.

Here's a good example of the Browns I was catching last Sunday. (Again, I didn't want to have him on the deck. I forgot my net today--it's on the float tube--and he wouldn't stay on my lap for a photo.) This one's not as big as last week's fish, but he's just as beautiful.

I really need to tie up a couple new Bombers. This one's getting a little raggedy.

The wind backed off, but there was a persistent breeze throughout the rest of the evening. A few small fish tried to make a rise of it, but, maybe due to the rain we had over the weekend, the lake was subdued.

I caught a small fish on an ant, and lost another when he succeeded in exchanging himself for a clump of weeds.

I paddled in with the cold breeze in my face, fish smell on my hands, and a settled feeling in my mind. I loaded up and dodged cows and deer and made it home as the Big Dipper was just coming into its own in the new dark.

I left the canoe on the rack, and everything packed.